The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has submitted comments on the draft second revision of China's Standardization Law. The comments are available to view here. The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China released this revision for public comment in September 2017.
ANSI, which has been closely monitoring the rollout of the reform of China's standardization system, encourages its members and stakeholders from both the U.S. and international standards communities to submit their organizations' individual comments through the National People's Congress website before the September 24, 2017, deadline [see related article]. ANSI offers its own comments for consideration in this process.
The Standardization Law serves as the legal underpinning for China's system, and its revision is a major component of China's ongoing standardization reform initiative. This is the third time the Chinese government has released a draft revision of the law for public comment. The first time was in March 2016, and the second in May 2017. ANSI's comments on the March 2016 revision are available here, and the comments on the May 2017 version are available here.
The main themes of ANSI's comments are as follows:
- ANSI welcomes the revisions to clarify the different types of standards and the inclusion of openness, fairness, and transparency in the formulation of social organizations standards.
- Nonetheless, ANSI continues to feel strongly that the law should reference and uphold the World Trade Organization (WTO) Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement.
- ANSI remains concerned regarding the self-disclosure requirements for so-called "enterprise standards" and requests that if these disclosure requirements remain, they be more limited and focused in scope.
- ANSI is also concerned with the lack of language on fair and open participation in standards development activities.
- ANSI notes there remains a lack of clarity on the circumstances under which one type of standard may become another type of standard.
More information on ANSI's China program is available on ANSI's Standards Portal. Questions can be directed to [email protected].