A variety of constituencies from the West have taken it upon themselves to
 reach out to China to “educate” the Chinese about the existing global
 standards development infrastructure, and to urge them to take part in that 
infrastructure in the same way as do other countries. Clearly, having 
China, with a single national vote, participate in ISO, IEC and ITU would 
be best for the status quo players that have become skillful in
participating in those organizations through decades of effort. It’s 
interesting to ask, however, whether that course of action, without more, 
would truly be best for China and its people.
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Standards often intersect with international trade in protectionist ways. All too often, policy makers have adopted laws and established regulations to protect domestic vendors in their home markets against competition from those abroad that would like to sell similar products into those markets. One goal of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade to which countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization are signatory is to prevent just such standards-based barriers to trade.
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This week brings the news that an US radar that launched into space aboard an Indian spacecraft has detected craters filled with ice on the moon.

Behind the innovation and bleeding edge headlines must lie a lot of seemingly mundane collaboration between technologists in India and USA.
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The Chinese government is showing considerable interest in ICT standardization. The Chinese State Council’s official policy clearly states a long term goal to reduce dependency of foreign ICT technology and to reduce payments to foreign innovators.

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