Toys from China Will Cost More

At the China Import & Export Fair in the southern city of Guangzhou in late April, one Western buyer protested against higher prices by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Too Expensive” in Chinese. That generated little sympathy from toy seller Clara Zhang. “We all laughed so hard,” says Zhang, 26, sales manager for China Nanjing Happy Toy, a maker of teddy bears and stuffed ducks. “Then we said, ‘Sorry, sir, you probably need to pay even more.’”

Hundreds of toymakers at the fair, the country’s largest trade show, are charging more as the world’s second-largest economy fights inflation that soared to an almost three-year annualized high of 5.4 percent in March. There are about 8,000 toy companies in China, according to the government-affiliated China Toy Assn., and the country exported $2.6 billion worth of toys in the first four months of the year, 17 percent more than a year earlier.