28/07/2020

SESEC closely monitors the process of standardisation reform in China. SESEC periodically collects and summarise new updates and data on six types of Chinese standards, namely: mandatory national standards; recommended national standards; sector standards; local standards; association standards; and enterprise standards. The following updates took place from March 2020 to June 2020:

Key Legal and Policy Updates

  • The Guiding Opinions on Further Strengthening the Administration of Sector Standards were released by MIIT on 27 April 2020.
  • The Administrative Measures for Mandatory National Standards started their implementation on 1 June 2020, after having been approved in December 2019 and released in January 2020 by SAMR/SAC.
  • The Measures for the Administration of Local Standards started their implementation on 1 March 2020, after having been approved in December 2019 and released in January 2020 by SAMR/SAC.

Statistics and Observations

  1. Government standards

The National Standards Information Public Service Platform (http://std.samr.gov.cn/), managed by SAMR, collects all national standards, both mandatory and recommended, as well as a part of sector standards. At the same time, MIIT is improving its Standards Information Platform(https://www.miitstd.cn/index.aspx), which collects all standards under the ministry.

According to the data included in the two platforms, at present there are:

  • 2,091 mandatory national standards in force, with 110 new ones starting to be implemented soon.
  • 35,580 voluntary national standards in force, with 1,184 new ones starting to be implemented soon.
  • 67,915 sector standards nation-wide, 39,476 of which currently in effect under MIIT.

Generally, the following trends can be identified for national standards:

  • The number of mandatory national standards will hold steady, no significant changes are foreseen;
  • National standards will be developed towards cross-sector and cross-industry technical requirements;
  • Sector standards keep playing a significant role in areas such as 5G and information and communication technologies;
  • National Technical Committees delegated to develop sector standards will become increasingly common;
  • The filing mechanism for sector standards has yet to be improved to ensure the principle of “everything is available”;
  • From 2020 onwards, all newly-released sector standard texts will be made available to the public.

In terms of local standards, the Local Standards Information Platform (http://dbba.sacinfo.org.cn/) shows that, to date, there are 44,875 local standards in force – an increase of 2.5% compared to March 2020. Local standards maintain their focus mainly on local management and livelihood requirements.

  1. Association standards

According to data collected from the National Association Standards Platform (http://www.ttbz.org.cn/), the number of associations and association standards in China has kept growing steadily.

Specifically, 3,403 social organisations and 15,808 association standards were registered on the Platform at the end of June 2020, marking an increase of 9% and 18% respectively compared to March 2020. 6,425 association standards registered (over 40% of the total) have their full texts made public, marking a 25% growth compared to the previous quarter. Nonetheless, certain key and influential associations are still not sufficiently committed to publicising relevant information on the Platform.

  1. Enterprise standards

As already verified in the previous quarter, statistics on enterprise standards are still no longer available on the National Enterprise Standards Information Platform (http://www.qybz.org.cn/). The reason may be related to the insufficient technical capacity of the platform to keep pace with such a large and rapidly growing amount of enterprise standards information.

On the other hand, the Top-Runners system continues to be promoted from central government to local governments. The latest developments include:

  • The State Grain and Reserves Administration released the Notice on Carrying out Top-runner Activity for the Enterprise Standards of Grain and Oil Products;
  • Yunnan province released the Implementation Plan for Enterprise Standards Top-runner System;
  • Jiangxi province determined eight key areas for the enterprise standards Top-runner evaluation in 2020.