Most recalls of toys made in China are due to design errors, not manufacturing problems, Canadian business professor Hari Bapuji said yesterday.

"We should be asking the toy makers: 'Are you guys learning from the errors that you are making? What are your systems to test? What are your systems to make sure that an error doesn't get repeated in the future?'" he said in an interview with Canadian Television.

Bapuji, professor of University of Manitoba and University of Western Ontario international business professor Paul W. Beamish jointly drew out a report on toy recalls, which is to be published by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

The latest report gave a close analysis on the reasons of Chinese-made toy recalls by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1988 to August 2007.

They found that of the 550 toy recalls since 1988, 76.4 percent were the problems that could be attributed to design flaws while only about 10 percent were attributable to manufacturing defects.

The report pointed out that when Mattel Inc. recalled 20 million toys this past August, 80 percent of the toys were pulled because they contained small magnets, which is a design flaw.