On 22 September, SAMR released the revised Administrative Measures for National Standards (hereinafter referred to as the “Measures”). The Measures will come into effect on 1 March 2023 and replace its previous edition released in 1990.

Compared with the 1990 edition, the Measures have changed as follows.

  1. The scope of national standards is expanded. National standards will cover not only the basic technical requirements in industry, agriculture, hygiene, and construction, but also the general requirements in resources, energy, environment, society governance, service, and production and circulation management. The purpose of the adjustment is to make it consistent with the corresponding provisions in the Standardization Law and objectives set by the National Standardization Development Outlines.
  2. The role and management of national reference materials are specified.
  3. Provisions for IPR protection of national standards are put forward. The Measures states that SAC owns the copyright of national standards as well as their foreign language editions, and the copyright are protection by law. The Measures also point out that no patent should be included in national standards, except those inevitable for the implementation of the standards.
  4. A standards verification system is introduced. It requires national standards’ technical requirements, core parameter, test and inspection methods to be verified during the process of project initiation, drafting, calling for comments, and implementation and application.
  5. That association standards can be converted to national standards is reiterated, and the role, scope, and coding method of guidance technical documents for national standardization are determined.
  6. The statement about TC secretariat organization is removed, as there is no clear management system on these organizations, which usually results in their standards being low quality.
  7. A standards assessment system is introduced. It consists of initiation assessment and technical review. The former is for the necessity and conformity of a standard project, while the latter is for the conformity of their development procedure and the scientificity and rationality of the technical content.
  8. Documentation review in the technical review is cancelled, as they cannot support timely communication and discussion and thus reaching consensus.
  9. Transition period between and the legal force of new and old standards are put forward, aiming to address the problem of when to implement a new standard and if the old one still effective after the new one released.
  10. A standards implementation information reporting and effectiveness assessment mechanism is added. It aims to accelerate standards’ revision and update, solving the problem of national standards missing, lagging, overlapping, and contradicting with other standards.

Generally, the Measures are indicative of China’s national standardization system progressing towards more openness and rationality. But a few of ambiguities still need to be clarified and concerns to be addressed in detailed policies and regulations in the future. Specifically,

  1. The scope of national standards is very generalized. Article 3 (7) states that “technical requirements that play a leading role in every relevant industry” can be made national standards. As a result, how to differentiate it with other kinds of standards in term of functionality is still a problem facing Chinese standards system.
  2. New systems and mechanisms brought forward lack details. Article 13 stipulates that SAC “shall establish a verification system of national standards and conduct verification as required on the technical requirements and test and inspection methods of national standards.” It is unclear what criteria and procedure will be taken for the verification. Article 19 proposes to evaluate the initiation of new national standard projects but doesn’t specify how the evaluation would be organized or how to ensure the openness and transparency of the evaluation system. Likewise, article 21 states that SAC “organizes professional national standards evaluation organizations to evaluate the initiation of standard projects” but doesn’t set requirements to guarantee these organizations’ working systems are open and transparent.
  3. More Chinese proposals will appear on international stages. Article 18 reads that “it is encouraged to simultaneously submit application for the initiation of international standard projects while submitting application for the initiation of national standard projects.” The best way to align with international standards and thereby reduce trade barriers is to either directly work on international level or start a national project and convert it to international standards when it is mature.
  4. Limited development duration cannot guarantee standards’ quality. Article 25 insists on the 24 months of duration for the development of mandatory national standards. It is obviously too short to develop these de facto technical regulations, as they would need plenty of time to reach extensive coordination and consensus.

In conclusion, it is foreseeable in near future that, the contradiction and overlapping between different kinds of standards won’t disappear; more Chinese standard proposals will appear on ISO/IEC platforms, probably resulting in a greater clout in international standards setting; decision-making in some systems and mechanisms still lack sufficient transparency, leading to foreign enterprises hard to effectively contribute to China’s standardization work; inadequate development time could harm some standardization stakeholders’ interests, as their opinions may not be fully considered; association standards are expected to play a greater role in China’s society governance, greatly increasing enterprises’ burden of tracking and participating in China’s standardization work.

The English translation of this regulation can be find here.