Foreign-invested enterprises can help set standard

Shanghai is encouraging foreign-invested enterprises to be involved in the drafting of standards, the city's market regulators announced on Saturday – World Standards Day.

Under a slew of regulations effective from Saturday in the Pudong New Area, the main initiating and drafting bodies of a single standard have been expanded to include cross-industry enterprises and organizations, domestic and foreign-invested, as well as scientific research institutions, colleges and universities, financial infrastructure operating institutions and technical organizations.

The regulations were jointly released by the Shanghai Administration for Market Regulation and the Pudong government.

The act is expected to break the bottleneck of flexibility restriction of standard release bodies, and promote international exchange of standards under the background of Shanghai's new track development layout as well as efforts to build new-type industry systems

"It is encouraged that local businesses join hands with Fortune 500 foreign-invested companies or world leading firms to jointly draft standards," said Chen Yanfeng, deputy director of the administration.

"We will support foreign-invested companies to get involved in standard drafting and smooth relevant channels for them, thus lifting the convenience and openness of their involvement," he added.

The regulations also note that companies in the upstream and downstream industry chain can jointly form a standard innovation consortium.

"The platform is aimed at pooling wisdom from global leading companies," said Gu Nan, deputy director of Shanghai Testing & Inspection Institute for Medical Devices.

"From an international perspective, they bring advanced technologies and concepts from the world to standard drafting, and they are also active in getting involved."