On January 1, 2018, the Revised Standardization Law of the
People's Republic of China has come into force. The new Law
modernizes and simplifies the previous standardization system
established almost thirty years ago. The 1989 Standadization Law,
in fact, did not meet the current needs for sustainable development
and threatened to slow the Dragon's growth.
The old Law provided for four categories of standards: national,
industry, local, and enterprise standards. National, industry and
local standards could be classified as either compulsory or
voluntary standards, enterprise standards only as voluntary
standards. Among such categories there was a hierarchy, so that
industry standards could be developed in the absence of national
standards, local standards could be issued in the absence of
industry standards, and individual businesses could adopt
enterprise standards dealing with aspects not regulated by other
standards.
