every product in American homes, from light bulbs to sofas to windows to Wi-Fi routers, meets the standards and measurements of a global system designed to ensure quality and impeccable performance.
The industry standards that the United States and its allies have established over the decades form an invisible matrix of rules that underpin the global marketplace. This uniformity, however mythical, is essential to international trade because it ensures that screws, USB plugs and shipping containers are interchangeable around the world. The standards reflect the consensus of international groups long dominated by Western technical experts.
Today, China wants to be a leader in the fields of the future. To the dismay of many Western countries, Beijing is using public money and political influence to try to set standards for all kinds of advanced technologies, from telecommunications to energy transmission to artificial intelligence.
“The dominance of technical standards underlying information and communication technologies and other emerging fields is a key element of Beijing’s ambitions,” said the annual report of the Economic and Security Review Commission of the U.S. and Chinese Congress, released in December.
China’s efforts are motivated by a desire to outdo the West, as well as by the accumulation of profits. Standards based on patented technologies often require users to pay royalties.
Nokia Corp.
и
Qualcomm Inc,
for example, who earn billions of dollars a year from the patents that underlie competitors’ cellular systems. China prefers to make this money by developing standards consistent with technologies developed by its own companies.
Standards are becoming increasingly relevant as regulations are set for the next generation of technologies that depend on 5G networks, including driverless cars, so-called smart cities and the Internet of Things – additions that will connect the digital and physical worlds like never before.
New areas, including facial recognition involve privacy and public safety, which a Congressional committee says have greater national security implications than in the past.
Technicians installed a portable 5G radio tower in Sedalia, Colorado last year.
Photo:
Daniel Brenner/Bloomberg News
According to Japan’s former trade minister, China is pushing for standards that encourage exports from companies with ties to Beijing, while strengthening the state security apparatus.
Akira Amari,
who heads the Japanese ruling party’s digital society group. “If Chinese products are used to collect data,” he said, “you have to assume that all of this ultimately belongs to the Chinese government.
Chinese officials and leaders say Beijing is simply learning to maneuver within the system created by the West and dominated by the West for a long time and that China, as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic economies, is rightly taking its place in the global economic community.
Beijing plans to unveil Chinese Standards 2035, an ambitious leadership plan in the field, in the near future. The Chinese Standards Authority and the State Cabinet did not respond to requests for comment.
“Global technical standards are still emerging,” said Dai Hong, a member of China’s National Standardization Management Committee, when the project was unveiled in 2018. “This gives the Chinese industry and standards a chance to outperform the world.”
In recent years China has paid more attention to aligning research and standards for new technologies with its national interests than the West, say researchers and standards experts who track China’s industrial development.
Chinese officials head at least four global standardization bodies, including the International Telecommunications Union, the UN body that regulates telephone and Internet connections, and the International Electrotechnical Commission, the industry group that regulates electrical and electronic technology. From 2015 to 2017, the Chinese official was president of the International Organization for Standardization, an industry group known as ISO that sells its standards for everything from footwear to management systems, Essential Oils and sex toys.
Set of standards
The first standards appeared at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when entrepreneurs realized that they could often make more money by harmonizing standards in areas such as railroads and telegraph links. Today, standards cover products, technologies and processes, such as business management. They are agreed upon in associations or UN bodies involving industry, governments and other stakeholders.
The popular USB connector standard was introduced in 1996 by a consortium of American Technology companies It has replaced several computer connectors and is constantly evolving.
Plugs, on the other hand, vary considerably from country to country, leading to confusion and necessitating the use of adapters.
France, Belgium,
Poland, Slovakia,
Czech Republic
Russia, Europe
except in Britain.
and Ireland
United Kingdom, Ireland,
Malta, Malaysia,
Singapore
Israel, the West Bank,
Gaza Strip
Australia, New Zealand
New Zealand, China,
Argentina
Switzerland,
Liechtenstein
The first standards appeared at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when entrepreneurs realized that they could often make more money by harmonizing standards in areas such as railroads and telegraph links. Today, standards cover products, technologies and processes, such as business management. They are agreed upon in associations or UN bodies involving industry, governments and other stakeholders.
The popular USB connector standard was introduced in 1996 by a consortium of American technology companies. It has replaced several computer connectors and is constantly evolving.
Plugs, on the other hand, vary considerably from country to country, leading to confusion and necessitating the use of adapters.
France, Belgium,
Poland, Slovakia,
Czech Republic
Russia, Europe
except in Britain.
and Ireland
United Kingdom, Ireland,
Malta, Malaysia,
Singapore
Israel,
The West Bank,
Gaza Strip
Australia, New Zealand
New Zealand, China,
Argentina
Switzerland,
Liechtenstein
The first standards appeared at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when entrepreneurs realized that they could often make more money by harmonizing standards in areas such as railroads and telegraph links. Today, standards cover products, technologies and processes, such as business management. They are agreed upon in associations or UN bodies involving industry, governments and other stakeholders.
The popular USB connector standard was introduced in 1996 by a consortium of American technology companies. It has replaced several computer connectors and is constantly evolving.
Plugs, on the other hand, vary considerably from country to country, leading to confusion and necessitating the use of adapters.
France, Belgium,
Poland, Slovakia,
Czech Republic
Russia, Europe
except in Britain.
and Ireland
United Kingdom, Ireland,
Malta, Malaysia,
Singapore
Switzerland,
Liechtenstein
Israel, the West Bank,
Gaza Strip
Australia, New Zealand
New Zealand, China,
Argentina
The first standards appeared at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when entrepreneurs realized that they could often make more money by harmonizing standards in areas such as railroads and telegraph links. Today, standards cover products, technologies and processes, such as business management. They are agreed upon in associations or UN bodies involving industry, governments and other stakeholders.
The popular USB connector standard was introduced in 1996 by a consortium of American technology companies. It has replaced several computer connectors and is constantly evolving.
Plugs, on the other hand, vary considerably from country to country, leading to confusion and necessitating the use of adapters.
France, Belgium,
Poland, Slovakia,
Czech Republic
Russia, Europe
except in Britain.
and Ireland
United Kingdom, Ireland,
Malta, Malaysia,
Singapore
Israel
The West Bank,
Gaza Strip
Switzerland,
Liechtenstein
Australia, New Zealand
New Zealand, China,
Argentina
China’s rise in standardization coincides with the stagnation of world leaders who have long been at the top. Within the ISO and similar groups, Chinese delegates hold about twice as many secretariat positions as they did a decade ago. These positions influence proposals, debates and priorities. The number of former guarantors, including the United States Germany, and the United Kingdom is relatively stable.
Europe’s competitors “are very actively developing international standards in key markets to protect and strengthen their competitive advantage,” said the Internal Market Commissioner
Thierry Breton
said in June. Failure to respond to the risks undermines “our economic competitiveness and technological leadership,” he said.
Virtuelles Display auf der ITU Telecom 2019 World Conference on Information and Communication Technologies.
Photo:
Szilard Kostrzyczak/MTI/Presse Associée
Germany and other advanced economies urged China to adopt global standards in the 1990s. Today, Chinese leaders and policymakers have a saying: Tier 3 companies make products. Tier 2 companies produce technology. Tier 1 companies set standards.
According to official documents, the Beijing government and regional governments provide annual grants of up to one million yuan, or about $155,000, to companies developing international standards in ISO and other bodies.
Western funding for standards development, which can take years of costly research and negotiation, has dwindled. If nothing changes, “we shouldn’t be surprised if we end up playing by Chinese rules,” said Christoph Winterhalter, director general of the German Institute for Standardization, or DIN.
Unlike the National Standardization Administration of China, DIN is a private organization funded primarily by standards sales and corporate membership fees. Less than 10% of its funding comes from the government.
Breaking with tradition
China’s ambitions were made clear in 2016 at an international meeting at the Peppermill Resort in Reno, Nev. Huawei Technologies Corp. called for the adoption of a preferred standard for 5G data error correction – methods to overcome communication errors that can disrupt information. Qualcomm’s competing proposal has already received widespread support.
Huawei continues a tradition of respectful consensus at this meeting of the Third Generation Partnership Project, the global standards body for 5G. The tense debate over the final decision lasted until midnight.
Huawei representatives told other Chinese executives attending the event that they expected them to support Huawei’s proposal, said Tong Wen, a Huawei researcher involved in the promotion. “And of course, they heard about it.”
The impasse ended with an unprecedented compromise: setting standards and introducing elements of 5G technologies.
A year later, Huawei nominated a candidate to head one of the organization’s key working groups, challenging Qualcomm’s candidate. Prior to the vote, the president warned Chinese officials not to bug phones in the voting booth, a practice used by Chinese delegations at some UN meetings.
The suspicion, confirmed by Chinese delegates from other companies, was that they all had to provide proof that they had voted with candidate Huawei, said a person familiar with the vote. A Huawei spokesman said the company had acted “in a fully transparent and cooperative manner, in accordance with the spirit and rules of the standardization process.”
Huawei, which holds the largest number of 5G patents of any company, also leads the pack in third-generation standards with more than 35,000, according to German data analysis company IPlytics. A quarter of them have been approved.
The smartphone from Huawei Technologies Co at the International Consumer Electronics Fair (IFA) in Berlin last year…
Photo:
Jacobi Dam/Bloomberg News
“It’s a trap.
In April, when the world first faced Covid-19, Chinese delegates in Geneva presented to the ISO plans for a high-tech city that could function in the event of a pandemic. The plans covered standards for collecting municipal data, such as traffic flows and public health emergencies. Some delegates questioned whether the proposals do not rather reflect the Chinese government’s propensity for Data Collection said a participant in the online meeting.
“It’s a trap,” said Mr. Amari, Japan’s former trade minister at the time. Approval would mean that China would “set the standard, implement the systems, then evaluate the data from those systems and collect it in Beijing,” he said.
Wang Biyu, chief researcher of Smart City Joint Labs, a Chinese think tank and author of the proposal, rejected Amari’s request. He said national privacy laws could block the collection of personal information.
For many next-generation technologies, China is at the forefront of standardization proposals because it is at the forefront. When European officials recently launched the Advanced Lithium Battery Project, they were surprised to learn that China was already setting up an ISO committee on lithium, hosted the Chinese secretariat and appointed the committee’s leaders.
In projects ranging from Indonesia to Nigeria, Beijing is also using its “Belt and Road” initiative to promote Chinese standards in established sectors such as rail construction and electricity transmission. China offers grants to countries to win contracts and then uses its standards to gain a foothold in partner countries that face high costs to implement international standards, industry officials said.
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China has shown little enthusiasm for standards that encroach on its sovereignty. In March 2019, an ISO committee working on writing systems for a Western keyboard of the world’s languages received a draft standard for typing in Cantonese, a version of Chinese spoken by some 65 million people in Hong Kong and southeastern China.
Hong Kong technical experts drafted it in hopes of preserving the territory’s cultural identity. According to a former European ISO delegate who has seen the email, the Chinese delegates indicated by email that they disagreed and that the existing standard in Chinese was sufficient.
At a meeting in Canada two months later, delegates discussed the project. Proponents in Hong Kong stated that Cantonese and Mandarin are indistinguishable, despite the use of similar characters.
The exceptionally large Chinese delegation, followed by dozens of slides, aggressively attacked the project, somewhat irritating some participants, according to three people familiar with the meeting. A member of the Chinese delegation told the Wall Street Journal that the proposed writing system would be used only in Hong Kong and not by the 60 million Cantonese speakers elsewhere in China.
The proposal was supported by countries such as the United States Canada and Russia, but foundered on administrative problems. It was resubmitted by supporters in May, and in September the head of the French commission confirmed its acceptance by submitting it for approval, according to people familiar with the process.
Shortly thereafter, Russia withdrew its support without explanation and suspended the measure, at least temporarily. Officials from Russia’s standardization body did not respond to requests for comment.
-Chieko Tsuneoka and Josh Chin contributed to this article.
E-mail Valentina Pop at [email protected], Sha Hua at [email protected] and Daniel Michaels at [email protected]
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