On December 12, 2023, CNCA issued the "Announcement on Strengthening the Quality Responsibility of the Laboratory Conducting Testing for Self-Declaration of Conformity in China Compulsory Certification (CCC)”, aiming to enhance the supervision on CCC self-declaration.

Currently, the CCC catalog includes 96 product types across 16 categories, with 19 product types implementing the self-declaration evaluation method, accounting for 19.8% of the product categories in the CCC catalog. Under the CCC self-declaration evaluation method, companies can affix the CCC mark to products and launch them for sale after conducting type testing in a laboratory of their choice and completing self-assessment. In recent inspections, issues, such as inadequate understanding of standards, non-standardized testing reports and original data records have been identified in some laboratories conducting testing for self-declaration. Therefore, the Certification and Accreditation Administration (CNCA) issued this document to strengthen the supervision and management of CCC self-declaration activities.

The document specifies the following requirements:

1.      For laboratories engaged in self-declaration testing, at least the following positions should be established, and dedicated personnel should be designated:

l  Acceptance of commission and contract review position.

l  Self-declaration testing plan development position.

l  Self-declaration testing report review and issuance position.

l  Self-declaration testing report upload (to authority) position.

2.      Laboratories should improve their traceability system and enhance internal management:

l  Establish a traceability system for the self-declaration testing process and results, retain evidence files covering the entire testing process to ensure traceability to the original state of the testing results.

l  Develop work documents specifying technical and implementation requirements for various stages such as acceptance of self-declaration commission, formulation of testing plans, testing implementation, review and issuance of testing reports, and report upload.

l  Strengthen internal management, implement necessary work quality evaluations and process quality monitoring measures to ensure the effective implementation of the testing process and uniform execution of standards in each stage.

3.      Laboratories should collect various quality risk information related to self-declaration testing, such as testing quality issues discovered by market supervision departments and industry regulatory authorities during supervision, quality and safety notifications of related products, product sampling results, risk warning information, as well as feedback from consumers and manufacturing enterprises. This information should be fully utilized to identify key links affecting testing results and strengthen quality risk control.

4.      Laboratories should publicly disclose information related to self-declaration testing, including fee standards, testing deadlines, and the commission testing process.

Simultaneously released with this document is the "Requirements for the Testing Process of the Self-Declaration Evaluation Method in China Compulsory Certification," which elaborates on the requirements from commission and acceptance to type testing, and further to testing report review and issuance, and result uploading. Laboratories conducting testing for CCC self-declaration should adhere to these requirements in the whole process of the testing.