Chinese legislators are revising a 13-year-old law on the
inspection of imports and exports to unify inspection standards on
foreign and domestic goods.
A
unified certification management system will be established so that
domestic and foreign commodities will be quarantined and inspected
according to the same standard, said Li Changjiang, head of the
State General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection
and Quarantine.
The new management system will use a single set of technical
regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures to
inspect commodities.
It
will use a single catalogue of products subject to compulsory
product certification, and one obligatory standard mark for
commodities made in China or abroad and charge them equally, Li
said.
This is a major step aimed at fulfilling the commitments China made
when negotiating entry to the World
Trade Organization (WTO), he added.
Under the current management system, imports have to comply with
both the quality certification on imported goods and the safety
certification that Chinese products have to obtain.
The new draft law aims to abolish this requirement for dual
certification, said Cheng Fang, deputy director of the
Certification and Accreditation Administration.
Under the draft amendments, quarantine and inspection staff will be
duty-bound to keep commercial secrets they may discover during
quarantine and inspection.
The draft amendments also revise the terminology in line with that
used in WTO rules.
China's law on standardization divides standards into "compulsory"
and "recommended" standards, while WTO regulations use the term
"non-compulsory" instead of "recommended".
The draft amendments stipulate that national technical regulations,
which are compulsory, must be applied to the imports and exports
listed in the quarantine and inspection catalogue.
The non-compulsory international standards will be applied when
China has no technical regulations on the commodities under
quarantine and inspection.
Li
yesterday reported on the draft law to the ongoing 26th session of
the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress,
where the draft will receive its first reading.
Legislators vote for a draft law or amendments after three readings
under normal conditions, according to the Legislative Procedure
Law.
(China
Daily February 28, 2002)