On April 25, 2016, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) hosted a one-day conference including a high-level delegation from the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic China (SAC). The event, entitled"Sino-U.S. Cooperation and the Internationalization of Standardization: Policy Updates and Opportunities," featured presentations from Yu Xinli, vice administrator, SAC; Joe Bhatia, president and CEO, ANSI; Madeleine McDougall, program manager, international development, ANSI; Teresa Cendrowska, vice president, global cooperation, ASTM International; and Jason Matusow, general manager, international standards, Microsoft.
The conference had 42 participants, including stakeholders representing the broad range of ANSI membership categories, including U.S. government, academia, standards developers, companies, and others. The Chinese delegation included: Yu Xinli, vice administrator, SAC; Li Xuanqing, deputy director general, general office, SAC; Chen Ying, director, international department, SAC; Guo Qiwen, deputy director general of the department of industry, transport, and commerce of the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council; Zhao Wenhui, research associate, China National Institute of Standardization; and Zhou Wen, president, Shenzhen Institute of Standards and Technology.
The event kicked off with a two-hour bilateral meeting between ANSI and SAC. Joe Bhatia gave an update on ANSI's monitoring activity on the reform and a brief preview of ANSI comments on the revised China Standardization Law. He also addressed a list of questions SAC had provided in advance of the visit. Following the bilateral meeting, Mr. Bhatia opened the main conference, which provided SAC the opportunity to meet and hear from a number of ANSI's members. SAC vice administrator Yu provided a detailed presentation on the standardization reform effort, progress made to date, and next steps. SAC also provided responses to a list of questions from ANSI and its membership during a Q&A session.
The "Sino-U.S. Cooperation and the Internationalization of Standardization" conference took place immediately following the release of several updates pertaining to the ongoing standardization reform effort in China. Notably, the draft China Standardization Law was released on March 22 for public comments by the Legislative Office of China's State Council [see the announcement].
ANSI's comments on the revised draft China Standardization Law are available here. More information on the ANSI-SAC conference, including links to all of the day's presentations, can be found here.
ANSI's international policy department has been closely following the rollout of the reform and has maintained close ties with SAC through frequent meetings and visits. In addition, ANSI's China Roundtable members have gathered to discuss key announcements (see news item link on China). SAC's visit to Washington, DC, follows ANSI's two trips to Beijing in June and September last year. The trips were aimed at fostering greater U.S-China cooperation in the areas of standardization and conformity assessment (see related article), (see related article).
For more information on the conference, visit the ANSI event page.