Chamber Achieves Success on New Measures for Certification in China Go back »
2018-04-24 | Beijing
In June 2017, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) co-issued, for public consultation, the draft Measures for the Administration of Certification Agencies with the Certification and Accreditation Administration of China (CNCA). On 20th July 2017, the European Chamber’s Quality and Safety Services (QSS) Sub-working Group submitted comments on Articles’ 22 and 24 to the Department of Policy and Legislation at the AQSIQ and are listed below:
- It is necessary to point out, that when foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) go paper-free, particularly European companies, their records and data shall not only have their physical copies stored, but electronically as well.
It is suggested that there should be both electronic and physical copies of records and data.
- For certification agencies set up by foreign investors or overseas sub-contractors in China, they are required to comply with their overseas headquarters or the overseas authorities and keep their records in English. If they had to translate their records into Chinese, this would tremendously increase the agency’s workload.
Exceptions should be made for the records language. Only for the certification of goods used overseas should records be kept in other languages.
- For the social responsibility report, the summary, core value and development concepts are all long-term strategies and will not vary year-to-year. These type of reports should reflect this by being spontaneous and voluntary.
It should be encouraged to submit a social responsibility report voluntarily on a regular basis rather than making it mandatory.
On 25th September 2017, the Chamber led a delegation of seven representatives from the QSS Sub-working Group to attend a roundtable dialogue with Xu Xinjian, director general of the Department of Policy and Legislation at the AQSIQ, along with the CNCA’s Department of Regulation and the Department of Accreditation. Our comments on the draft along with our key recommendations from the QSS Sub-working Group Position Paper 2017/2018 were presented at the roundtable by the sub-working group’s chair. Director General Xu and Fu Qiang, director of the CNCA, responded to each concern and agreed to take the first two comments on Article 22 into consideration.
On 14th November 2017, the AQSIQ and the CNCA jointly released the Measures for the Administration of Certification Agencies 2017. Unfortunately, the Chamber’s comments were not reflected in the document and many articles and terms remained unclear.
On 5th December 2017, the QSS Sub-working Group submitted a lobby letter to the Department of Policy and Legislation at the AQSIQ and Department of Accreditation at the CNCA that reiterated requests found in the last batch of submitted comments (specifically points 1 and 2).
From January 2018 to March 2018, the Chamber’s working group coordinator consistently called both departments to follow-up on the recently submitted comments.
In April 2018, the AQSIQ together with the CNCA published the Interpretation on the Measures for the Administration of Certification Agencies. All the comments and suggestions previously outlined in the European Chamber’s 2017 lobby letter were accepted and can be found on pages 65–69.
