ABSTRACT: Standards-Related Barriers to Trade in Chinese ICT Market

Xiaomeng Lu

9/29/2008
(Original Publish Date: 9/20/2008)

Do Standards and Conformity Assessment Constitute Barriers to Trade in General? Although the low response rate of OECD survey is insufficient to answer this question, in most cases, there is no doubt that in the global market, standards and conformity assessment can pose barriers to trade. How Standards and Conformity Assessment Constitute Barriers to Trade in Chinese ICT market? And How Much They Would Cost? When it comes to the economic analysis, in China's ICT market, some facts are: preliminary development stage of Chinese ICT industry, fast growing value of ICT market, challenges such as unevenness of ICT penetration, price and promotion competition, perceived regulatory risk, and low quality of higher education with inadequate relevancy to market needs. At the same time, standards and conformity assessment schemes are gradually being established to fulfill China's WTO accession commitment. In terms of the importance of this issue in ICT imports and exports, once erected, Chinese mandatory ICT standards and conformity assessment may result in significant barriers to trade in terms of economic value.