On April 14, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation of China (SAMR) officially announced the free online access of the official foreign language translations of the country’s national standards, and held a press conference to elaborate more details on this work together with other relevant national ministries including Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), Ministry of Transport (MOT), and Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

China’s efforts on providing clearer information and easier public access to its national standards starts with the launching of National Public Service Platform for Standard Information (hereinafter referred to as “the National Standard Platform”, at https://std.samr.gov.cn/ ) in December of 2018. It regularly updates and publicizes the standard information and status of China’s standard systems, not only national standards, but also sector and association standards, together with basic information of national TCs and many other functions and relevant information that relates with standards. Public access to full text of national standards is also included in this National Standard Platform for a couple of years, and starting from the first half of 2025, all national standard in Chinese are free to be read and downloaded in this platform except the voluntary ones that adopt international standards due to copyright and intellectual property reasons.

Translating key national standards into foreign languages, including but not limited to English, French, German and Russian etc., has been defined as one of the key standardization tasks of China. Up to this date, there are 2,613 translated national standards in different foreign languages, covering more than 20 key sectors such as equipment manufacturing and overseas contracted projects. Now all of these standards are publicized in full text on the National Standard Platform at: https://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/std/std_list_type?p.p1=6&p.p90=circulation_date&p.p91=desc&request_locale=en_US. For this newly launched function:

ž  It serves as an authoritative and convenient channel for the international community to access Chinese standards.

ž  It has established a convenient and precise user query function. Users can search for standards by standard number, Chinese and English names of the standards, or browse by industry through the International Standard Classification (ICS).

ž  The system has also effectively associated the Chinese and foreign language versions, meaning that when users visit the Chinese version, they can link to the corresponding foreign language version, and when browsing the foreign language version, they can quickly link to the Chinese version.

ž   A plugin is required for accessing the full text (for copyright protection reasons), and the official guide for install the plugin is published in Chinese at the same website:  https://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/std/FOHelp .

This new measure will greatly facilitate the access to Chinese standard for foreign stakeholders. It is also worth noting that, SAMR will launch a function on the platform as a next step, to collect feedback on the implementation and application of the foreign language versions of national standards and for soliciting translation needs. If domestic and foreign users have any suggestions or opinions during the usage process, or if they have any translation needs for related foreign language versions, they can submit them through the platform.