Talkstandards » Blog Archive » On Standardization in China

On Standardization in China

posted by Wang Ping on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 6:00 pm

In this Talkstandards exclusive article Mr Wang Ping, Deputy Chief Engineer, Deputy Executive Governor of Science and Technology Committee, CNIS (China National Institute of Standardization) outlines the current state of China’s standardization system. In another exclusive article, Mr Wang Ping desribes CNIS’ role in Chinese standardization, found here.

In this note I will address some misconceptions about China’s standards system, especially the notion that it still represents a top-down, Government-centered approach to standardization. Reality is quite different. To understand what is really happening, I will first describe the origins of standardization in China and its legal and institutional set-up.

1. Standardization Law of China

The Standardization Law of China was promulgated by the State Council in 1988, prescribed and established the standardization system and the standard system of China that have continued to the present. Also a Regulation for Implementation of the Standardization Law was promulgated by the State Council in 1990. Four levels of standards of China have been specified by the Law — national standard, sector standard, local standard, and enterprise standard. Different standardization responsibilities of government agencies at different levels which included central government, sector ministries, local government, have been also specified. The national standards and sector standards were divided into mandatory standards and voluntary standards. Most observers agree that the Chinese mandatory standards can be regarded as technical regulations by the government. Hence, mandatory standards should not be mistaken as a government policy to shape and manipulate markets.

2. Standardization at National level

Today, the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), a formal representative of central government, is in charge of the management and coordination of national standardization in China. All new items of national standards need to be registered and approved by SAC. The preparation and drafting of a national standard takes place in a relevant technical committee and the final draft standard is to be approved and issued by SAC.

At the national level, SAC is supported by three organizations that are directly involved in standardization. The China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS) supports SAC as a think tank as well as a research and standard drafting institute. The second organization is the Standard Press of China (SPC) for publishing. The third one is the China Association of Standardization (CAS) for promoting standardization and training. In addition, a fourth organization plays a very important indirect role, i.e. the China National Administration of Certification and Accreditation (CNCA).

There are about 450 national technical committees and 600 subcommittees in different technical areas. And approximately 40,000 experts from industries, associations, research institutes, universities, government agencies, nominated by SAC are working in those committees. Most of the committees are jointly run by both SAC and sector ministries. Currently, there are nearly 23,000 national standards of which 3,100 are mandatory and others are voluntary. And there are about 44% of the national standards adopted international standards of ISO, IEC, ITU or other advanced national standards of ANSI, BSI, DIN, etc.

3. Standardization at the sector level

China’s sector standardization activities are coordinated by government agencies including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), the Ministry of Railways (MOR), the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), etc. In each Ministry, there is a specific department which is in charge of the sector standardization for the new standard items register, final draft approval and issuance. The sector standards are also created in technical committees.

It is noteworthy that via the reorganization of the government, 10 of the ministries disappeared since 1998 including Ministry of Power Industry, Ministry of Coal Industry, Ministry of Metallurgy Industry, Ministry of Machinery Industry, Ministry of Chemistry Industry, Ministry of Electron, Ministry of Geology and Mining Industry, Ministry of Forestry, Federation of Light Industry, Federation of Textile Industry. As a result, the management of those sector standards was for some years transferred to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). But in 2008, as part of another government reorganization, management responsibility was transferred from NDRC to MIIT.

Whatever changes occurred in the government, the important thing is that the drafting of each standard takes place in a working group affiliated with a relative technical committee in which stakeholders are drawn from industry and other research institutes, universities, and government agencies.

For historical reasons, China also has some sector standardization research institutes, such as the China Electronics Standardization Institute, the China Telecommunications Standards Institute, the Standard Research Institute of MOHURD, the Standard and Metrology Research Institute of MOR, the Machinery Standardization Institute, the China Metallurgical Information and Standardization Institute. All those standardization institutes need to support government agencies to draft mandatory standards. But at the same time, they also need to develop voluntary standards to meet the needs of industry. In other words, all the standardization activities are closely interacting with relevant technical committees, which provides some flexibility to the Chinese standards system.

In addition, some industrial associations have emerged in standardization and have become very successful after China has implemented market economy. These industrial associations include for instance:

1. CCSA – China Communication Standardization Association,

2. CESA – China Electronics Standardization Association,

3. CECS – China association for Engineering Construction Association,

4. CEEIA – China Electrical Equipment Industrial Association,

In recent years some industrial alliances also became very successful in standardization in China, e.g.:

1. AVS Industry Alliance – Audio Video coding Standard Industry Alliance,

2. IGRS Alliance – Intelligent Grouping and Resource Sharing Alliance,

3. CFA – Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance

4. Standardization at the local level

In contrast to a widespread perception that China’s standards system is centralized, there are in fact strong elements of decentralization. This enables a broad participation of stakeholders in China’s standardization. In fact, mainland China has 31 provinces and autonomous regions including municipalities. In every such kind of region there is a specific department of government in charge of the management of local standardization. There is also a provincial standard institute in each province or autonomous region to support government for local standards development, e.g. Shanghai Institute of Standardization, Shandong Institute of Standardization, Shenzhen Institute of Standards and Technology. Currently local standardization usually focuses supporting local economy development, specifically in agriculture, urban construction, protection of geographical indication of farm produce, etc.

5. Some Open Issues

(1) The development of China’s standardization system has been driven by the market opening process after the economic reform since the 1980s. Before, during the period of the “Planned Economy”, all the standards were mandatory and all the standardization activities were tightly controlled by government. Since the opening and reform started by Mr. Deng Xiaoping important changes have occurred. While the government still remains in charge of managing standardization, most standards development activities are carried out in a decentralized manner, in several hundreds of technical committees scattered among different sectors. Those processes have become increasingly transparent, even though some problems still remain.

(2) ) When the Standardization Law was promulgated in 1988, the country was in the early years of reform and opening up and was developing a “planned commodity economy.” Naturally, the Law was designed to serve economic development in that stage.

But now it is obvious that the Law can no longer adapt to the development of China’s market economy. Of all the four levels of standards, (i.e. national standards, sector standards, local standards, and enterprise standards) the formulation of the first three is presided over by the government. That is to say, the government has the right to preside over the formulation and issuance of the three levels of standards that include all the mandatory and voluntary ones. Besides, the Law did not give industrial associations a legal status to formulate standards. All these are inconsistent with the principle of market economy.*

The Law is still undergoing legal revision, and its announcement is still pending. In light of the complex issues to be addressed, this should not come as a surprise. In Europe, it took decades to work out a robust legal framework for standardization.

(3) In China there are intense discussions that enterprises should become the main forces of standardization. But there is still some way to go to achieve this goal. Only a few big companies like Huawei, Lenovo, Haier, etc. as well as some big state owned enterprises have the ability to participate standardization at national level and international level. But most SMEs in China are so weak that they don’t have the ability and resource to effectively participate in standardization.

(4) China has been persistent in its economic reform and in its opening up to the world economy. But the process of merging with the world economy has been gradual. In the same way, the standardization system of China is also gradually merging with the world’s standardization system. China’s economy has grown extremely fast. But progress in institutional reform has lagged behind the speed of economic transformation. Obviously, this kind of reform must be accompanied by some important changes in the perspective of culture and thinking of people. I hope that our foreign colleagues understand that to bring about such far-reaching changes requires some time, especially in a country as large and diverse as China.

Further discussion on Chinese standardization and standards policy can be found at the June Talkstandards Open Forum

Acknowledgement: I would like to express my gratitude to my friend Dr. Dieter Ernst at the EAST WEST CENTER (Honolulu) for his suggestions and his editorial help in the preparation of this document.

* Wang Ping, Wang Yiyi, John Hill, Page 17, Standardization Strategy of China — Achievements and Challenges, EAST-WEST CENTER WORKING PAPERS, Economics Series, No 107 January 2010

recent DISCUSSION

Jane Winn says:

In response to the Wang Ping’s question about the Canadian system (The governing Council is appointed by the federal government, and reports to Parliament through the Minister of Industry.), I must admit that I don’t really know anything about the Canadian system.

In general political economy terms, the “Anglo-Saxon” countries (UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) are usually more receptive to self-regulation (private governance) than are the traditional civil law countries (Germany, France, Italy, etc), so I’m surprised to learn that SCC has such close ties to its government.

I looked on some other NSB’s websites to see what they said about governance: ANSI is organized as a non-profit corporation with a board of directors with responsibity for ANSI management. BSI has a royal charter and remains the national standards body of the UK, but appears to be operating like a global for-profit business since 1988, so I don’t think its board is appointed by the UK government. Standards Australia is a public company with a membership council (mostly private sector) that elects its board of directors. Standards New Zealand is a non-profit, user-funded “crown entity” (not sure what that means) but there was no mention of government appointment of directors. Even France’s AFNOR has an administrative council of 30 members, 24 of whom are chosen by its members, 4 of whom are chosen by the ministry of industry and 2 of whom are chosen by AFNOR’s staff.

So of these countries (5 Anglo-Saxon, one Civil Law), Canada appears to have the most direct government involvement in the management of its NSB, more even than France, which is a bit surprising.

jkw
Mattias Ganslandt says:

Wang Ping, Let me add a few observations. As China grows and becomes and increasingly more important trading partner to the US and to the European Union the externalities of a standardization system that affects the competitive situation and trade terms are likely to become more significant. It is accordingly not surprising that, from a US and EU perspective, reforming Chinese standardization is increasingly desirable. It should also be added, and this applies to all large economies not only China, that the unilateral incentive to use policy that influence competition and trade to achieve better terms-of-trade or more favorable competitive condititions is always present. As China grows the incentive to use policy strategically will increase. The direction of Chinese (or EU, or US) standardization policy is thus not necessarily in the direction of openness and market principles. It is therefore in the interest of trading partners that China makes multi-lateral commitments./Mattias Ganslandt
Mattias Ganslandt says:

Wang Ping, I appreciate your reply. I agree that it is neither possible nor advisable to aim for a perfect system. Any system has faults and weaknesses. It is worth mentioning that Europe is considering reforming its standardization system. The present EU system (with ESOs) has some disadvantages in terms of its limited ability to use and incorporate standards developed by informal foraand consortia. Correspondingly, the US system sometimes lacks the ability to produce sufficient co-ordination (with second generation mobile network standards often mentioned as an example). /Mattias
Wang Ping says:

Mattias Ganslandt: Additional information– China will send a group of standardization experts very soon to EU countries for the training of standardization practice. It is supported by both EU government and SAC, as well as EU countries standardization bodies.
Wang Ping says:

Mattias Ganslandt: Thanks. The speed of reform is not so fast, e.g. the revisoin of Standardization Law started from about 5 years ago, but now it is still pending. As I mentioned in the article, the evolvement of institution lags to the economy development. I agree with you, that China’s standardization system should be more open, industry-triven and market relevant, and the dialogue China and EU/US is a good way to understand each other as well as for the standardization system reform of China. But I think maybe it is not practical trying to get a perfect standardization system in a short time, in contrast with the western world, I think you may agree that you finally get your whole institutional complex today passed through more 200 years. On the other hand, the change of human ideaistic would be more difficult than the change of market structure.
Mattias Ganslandt says:

Wang Ping, You are providing key information that is most informative and helpful. The article essentially shows that your perspective and the external (US and European) perspective share common features. First, public policy plays an important role in Chinese standardization. Second, government bodies rather than informal (private) fora and consortia constitute the heart of – if not the whole – process. Third, China plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and the change of standardization policy reflects this orientation towards market economy principles. This leaves two issues where some difference in opinion remains: the speed of reform and the direction of change. You emphasize that Chinese standardization policy is moving towards a more industry-driven and voluntary process. An openess towards EU/US and willingness to have a constructive dialogue is indeed promising./Mattias
Wang Ping says:

Jane Winn:
I have a question to you. How do you think about the approach used by Canadian standardization system. From SCC website, you can read as the following —- The governing Council is appointed by the federal government, and reports to Parliament through the Minister of Industry.
Wang Ping says:

Jane Winn:Thanks. I understand most American observers have this kind of perspective. Yes, in China there are national standards, sector standards, local standards that are conducted by government. That means all right of new items setting up and the approval of final draft standards are at the hand of government. In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about how China’s standardization system should be reformed to be relevant to the market economy, and what it would be in the future. Most people agree to foster private sector standards, and association standards. We need more time to do the reform. Currently, the private secter are still weak that there are no private organization who can coordinate the national standardization, then, most people agee at present that the government can play the role of it. On the other hand, most people also agee that we should do the revision of the Standardization Law, to make the standardization system more relevant for implementing market economy.
Jane Winn says:

This is a very interesting and informative article. With regard to the possibility of clearing up misconceptions about whether China’s standards system is takes a “top-down, government-centered” approach, it may not be helpful to frame the debate in those terms because they are used so differently by different observers. Participants whose primary experience has been with the US standards systems are quick to conclude that any foreign system in which the government plays a large role in the overall governance of standard-setting activities is “top-down” without focusing on how the substance of individual standards is determined. From this perspective, as long as the PRC government is acting like a developmental state (which I believe it is), then it has a “top-down” standards system, even if private stakeholders have significant input in the content of standards, or some decisions are taken locally rather than centrally.

For US observers, one hallmark of “bottom-up” standard setting is governance by private enterprises and not facilitated or led by the state. Observers such as MIT (and Fudan) professor Yasheng Huang http://web.mit.edu/yshuang/www/ draw attention to the major role still played even after 30 years of market reforms by the Chinese state in what would be considered private sector enterprise in advanced market economies. Thus the involvement in PRC standard setting activities of leading Chinese enterprises that enjoy strong support in various forms from the Chinese Communist Party or PRC government would constitute further proof of “top-down, government-centered” approach to some US observers.
Wang Ping says:

Vanessa Zhang: Thanks for your comments and outline of the article.
Wang Ping says:

George Willingmyre: Thanks. The issue of IPR policy is very special policy by SAC. I was not able to discuss this topic as I am not an expert in this area. Thank you for your explanation about the situation for world’s SMEs. But, in contrast to developed countries, in China even some big companies are still very weak to participate in standardization.
Wang Ping says:

Stacy Baird: Thank you for your comments. Some consortium standards have great influence in China. For example, CFA – Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance (I mentioned in the article) is a member of OASIS. What they are doing is to promote robust applications of SOA standard in China’s software industry. But, a lot of things have to be fostered. The participation and involvement of formal standardization should be fostered, as well as the less formal standards like consortium standards. For your second question, I agree with you that some time (not very often) you can feel the hand of government to support indigenous innovation and relevant standards. But I think this issue is a little bit complicated to discuss. Whatever, as the weaknesses of Chinese companies in innovation, the government try to get a balance on absorbing foreign technologies and fostering the domestic technologies. It is also interesting that there have been a lot of discussions in China about how govenrment play the role to promote economy development and technological innovation.
Vanessa Zhang says:

This is a thoughtful and informative article which clarifies several misconceptions in China’s standardization policy. It’s not a straightforward top-down policy, and the mandatory standards are more of technical regulations rather than market intervention by the government, and the standards are both centralized at national level and decentralized at local level. The article especially sets out that the institution reform has lagged economic reform, and the current Standardization Law can no longer fits China’s market-oriented economy. Enterprises and industrial associations are playing an increasingly important role in standardization, but are still lack of legal status to participate in the formulation of standards. Changes in legal system, especially the Standardization Law, are important for the internationalization of China’s standardization policy.
Mattias Ganslandt says:

To read the article George Willingmyre refers to (April 2010 China’s Latest Draft Disposal Rules For Patents In Standards: A Step Forward?) go to http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/04/01/china%E2%80%99s-latest-draft-disposal-rules-for-patents-in-standards-a-step-forward/
George Willingmyre says:

1) Congratulations. You have helped explained how the China standards system may
appear to outsiders at times as a unified mandatory national system and at other times as a
decentralized sector specific system. 2) A current strategic standards policy topic not addressed in the article is that of patent policy for standards or as CNIS names this, “Disposal Rules for Inclusion of Patents in National Standards” TalkStandards treated this issue during the June Talkstandards Open Forum and I have written about the issues in China’s Latest Draft Disposal Rules For Patents In Standards: A Step Forward? IP- Watch.org April 1. 3) You describe one problem that is universal the world over. That is attracting participation from the small and medium size (SME) businesses and innovators that will be the subjects of the standardization: ”… Only a few big companies like Huawei, Lenovo, Haier,etc. as well as some big state owned enterprises have the ability to participate standardization at national level and international level.” The SME issue in China is no different than it is/was in other countries. SMEs by definition lack the resources of larger businesses to engage in international standards setting. Openness to as broad a cross section of global industry participation is a helpful tool in this regard. China has made some progress in selectively allowing the participation of foreign experts in national standards activity. However there is room for improvement that can be beneficial for standards innovation in China. There is a wealth of expertise ready to contribute to China standards activity and it is regrettable that some China standards activity is not open to this expertise.
Stacy Baird says:

Very illuminating and wonderful article. I would add that in addition to the challenges of the scale and diversity of China you note, so too are challenges created by the rapidity of innovation taking place and the scale of the evolution of the entire marketplace. It’s hard enough to transform such enterprises as the standards system and a patents system without the enormous influx in innovation into those systems. China’s efforts are indeed admirable.

In your closing comments, you note that “most SMEs in China are so weak that they don’t have the ability and resource to effectively participate in standardization.” I understand that increasingly innovation is coming from smaller and mid-sized Chinese companies –for example, in the energy sector. To increase their participation, I assume you suggest greater reliance on industrial sector standards-setting. Do you foresee a role for less formal standards, such as those developed by consortium or through patent pools (or other market-based approaches)?

Lastly, you describe “Most observers agree that the Chinese mandatory standards can be regarded as technical regulations by the government. Hence, mandatory standards should not be mistaken as a government policy to shape and manipulate markets.” How do you square this observation with the Chinese government’s policy for indigenous innovation certification – a policy that makes standards central to certain trade and economic development? It seems to me that on occasion, usually momentous occasions, the Chinese government makes decisions about standards (some mandatory, some not, such as indigenous innovation, the development of IPv9 and TD-SCDMA) that are directly intended to shape the market.” I would not argue that this is always a bad thing – but it seems to be a view supported by the facts.

On Standardization in China

recent DISCUSSION

Comment on this post

About the Author

Wang Ping

Talkstandards.com

An active online community where developers, researchers, policymakers and other interested parties can share ideas and collaborate on the global standards system.