20/04/2020
SESEC has always been following up the standardization reform in China. Every once in a while, SESEC will collect and sort out the data of six types of Chinese standards, namely, mandatory national standards, recommended national standards, sector standards, local standards, association standards, and enterprise standards, and observe their latest development. The following progress from November 2019 to March 2020 has been observed.
Key Legal and Policy Updates
- Government-led standards
- Three Measures, Measures for the Administration of Mandatory National Standards, Measures of MIIT for Industry Standards (Draft for Comment), and Measures of the Professional Standardization Technical Committee of MIIT (Draft for Comment), have been published, with the first to be implemented in June 1, 2020.
- Measures for the Administration of Local Standards was approved in December 2019, released in January 16, 2020 and implemented in March 1, 2020.
2. Association standards
- A policy, Notice of the General Office of MIIT on the Application of 100 Association Standards Demonstration Projects in 2019, has been released to facilitate the development of association standards.
3. Enterprise standards
- SAMR has released Key Areas for Implementing Enterprise Standards “Top Runners” System in 2019, identifying 100 products for 2019.
Statistics and Observations
1. Government standards
There is a decline in the number of government standards. According to the data presented in the National Standards Information Public Service Platform and the MIIT Standards Information Platform, there are at present 2100 mandatory national standards, 35,287 voluntary national standards, 66,549 sector standards in China’s standards system. SAMR provides national platforms with information regarding national standards and voluntary sector standards respectively. Although MIIT’s standards platform is available now, it does not include all MIIT sector standards yet.
There are 43,787 local standards registered in the Local Standards Information Platform. Many of those local standards focus on local management and livelihood requirements. Take Beijing for example, by December 2019, Beijing had published 2365 local standards; 282 local standards have been released in the past half year, most of which concern city construction and green production, including energy saving, transport, etc.
2. Association standards
Association standards kept rapidly growing with the support of government policy. A total of 3116 social organizations have been registered on the National Association Standards Information Platform, that is an increase of 8%; 13,374 standards have been published, growing by 20%; and 5095 standards published disclose their full contents, an increase of 31%.
In addition, 129 association standards have been added into the list of green design product standards by MIIT. These standards can apply for green product certification.
3. Enterprise standards
Statistics for enterprise standards are no longer available. Not fully capable of dealing with such a large amount of information, the Enterprise Standards Information Platform allows restricted searching only. 15 standards are shown on the website if visitors search with key words, but information about the enterprise, the standard and the product, as well as the self-declaration of the enterprise can only be found when searching for a specific standard.
The Enterprise Standards “Top Runners” Alliance has been established, aiming to foster “Top Runner” enterprises, propose 3rd party assessment bodies, promote “Top Runner” products and increase its competitiveness as well as to promote the “Top Runners” system. Related supportive and incentive policies are provided in 12 provinces. For more details, see https://www.sesec.eu/supportive-and-incentive-policies-for-enterprise-standard-top-runners-in-12-provinces-municipalities-and-autonomous-regions/
4. China in international standardization
Despite the number of mandatory national standards declining, China is now more active in international standardization. This can be seen by the publishing of 580 Chinese national standards in foreign language versions, the occupation of 70 Chinese chairs/vice-chairs in ISO/IEC technical committees/sub-committees/working groups, the establishment of 87 ISO/IEC secretariats in China, and the launch of 583 China-led ISO/IEC standards/projects.
