Abstract：With market-oriented reforms deepening since the reform and opening-up, the standardization system launched in China’s planned economy period has undergone major changes, one of them being the transformation of China’s legal system of standardization, marked by the revision of the Standardization Law in 2017. The transformation of China’s legal system of standardization is shown in the following four main aspects: (1) The standards have seen the return from technical regulations to technical specifications. Prior to the Standardization Law, standards were stipulated as technical regulations. The Standardization Law passed in 1988 deleted the stipulation and marked the beginning of the return. The reform of the standardization system in 2015, which aimed at integrating and streamlining mandatory (compulsory) standards, and optimizing recommended (recommendation) standards, furthered the return. The revision of the Standardization Law in 2017 limited mandatory (compulsory) standards merely to national standards (Guobiao standards/GB), while recommended (recommendation) standards covered industry and local standards, rendering the standards closer to its nature as technical specifications. (2) The standardization system has improved from hierarchical to equal. The hierarchy of standards is common in international standardization. China has adopted the same system, while there was, before the revision of the Standardization Law, another hierarchy among national standards, industry standards, local standards, and enterprise standards, in which they had different effectiveness in practice. The revision of the Standardization Law in 2017 limited mandatory (compulsory) national standards to a specific scope, and for other types of standards, their effectiveness tended to be equal in terms of legal status. (3) Standardization resource allocation has upgraded from government-leading to market-and-government-leading. The standardization system launched during the planned economy period of China basically featured in government-dominated standardization resource allocation. The revision of the Standardization Law changed that by clearly stipulating the status of enterprises and social groups as standardization subjects according to the requirements of the standardization system reform on the role of the market in allocating standardization resources, and establishing a standardization resource allocation system that places equal emphasis on both market and government. (4) The scope of standardization has expanded from the first, second and tertiary industries to social undertakings. With reform and opening up and the development of social economy, the scope of standardization has continued to expand. Before the revision of the Standardization Law, the main fields of standardization prescribed by law were agriculture, industry and service sectors (first, second and tertiary industries). The revision of the Standardization Law expands the scope to social undertakings and other fields, providing legal supports for standardization required in economic and social development.Standardization is a significant approach to the modernization of national governance. The revision of the Standardization Law in 2017 served as a response to the requirements of the standardization system reform of China, and the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. This paper, by combining history and theory, examines the reform of China’s legal system of standardization in a broader context of the market-orient reform. It is a study on the main contents of the revision of the Standardization Law and its timeline, which is expected to be of great theoretical and practical importance for understanding China’s standardization law and the system.
柳经纬, 聂爱轩. 我国标准化法制的现代转型[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2021, 51(1): 69-80.
Liu Jingwei, Nie Aixuan. Modern Transformation of China’s Legal System of Standardization: On the Revision of the Standardization Law. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2021, 51(1): 69-80.
2021, Vol. 51 
