New Guidelines on Foreign Participation in Standards Work

On December 5th, the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) released the Guidelines on Foreign Invested Enterprises' Participation in China's Standardization Work. This document echoes article 10 of the State Council’s Several Measures Concerning Further Openness and Active Utilization of Foreign Investment on ensuring domestic and foreign-invested enterprises participate in China's standardization work on an equal footing, further deepening the reform of standardization work, and making the standards development/revision process more transparent and highly open.
 
After the release of Circular 5 at the beginning of this year, USITO was engaged in the very early drafting of the Guidelines, and submitted input to SAC. Although USITO supports policies that do not distinguish between FIEs and domestic firms in the first place, the release of these guidelines seek to address current issues FIEs face.
 
The Guidelines include 10 articles on different aspects of standardization work related to FIEs: equal treatment as domestic companies, participation in the drafting of national standards and technical committees, and IPR policies. The Guidelines also point out that standardization work should not be used to erect unfair competition behaviors. Overall, the Guidelines are focused on national standards, with a note at the end stating FIEs participation in industry, local and social organization standardization work can reference this guideline.