Guangdong Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau has vowed to step up inspections of imported automobile parts, after 96 sets of faulty brake linings were ceremonially destroyed at a news conference on Friday.

"These substandard brake linings for automobiles would have seriously threatened road safety if they had made it to consumers," said Zhao Qun, deputy director of the bureau’s Nanhai branch, during the ceremony in Guangzhou, capital of the province.

The brake linings were impounded following inspections last year. Samples from 89 batches of brake linings were inspected and 43 of those, or 48 percent, were found to be substandard.