The government decided to introduce the standards to help China fulfil the challenges and duties of World Trade Organization membership.

In October last year, the State General Administration for Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine set up a special agency - the Administration for Standardization - to speed up its standardization work, with reference to international practice.

The administration will conduct research and study of the standards and related technical regulations in Japan, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, in order to help Chinese high-tech enterprises tap international markets by adopting advanced standards, said sources with the standardization authority.

Li Zhonghai, head of the newly established administration, said that systematic standards involving national, industrial, local and enterprise standards have taken shape in China in recent years to meet the basic demands of economic and social development.

There were more than 32,000 industrial standards, 11,000 local ones and 860,000 standards established by enterprises at the end of 2000. The latest statistics from the administration show that China had adopted 19,744 national standards by the end of last year. Of these, 8,621 - or 43.7 per cent - were based on international practice.

More effort will be needed to help China's standards conform to international ones, Li said. Last year, the administration's efforts were mainly devoted to the standardization of agricultural products, the service sector and the high-tech industry.

Agricultural standards have been drafted to standardize the quality of a variety of products and to help farmers supervise the whole process of production, including the selection of seeds or stock, planting, breeding and the processing of agricultural products.

(China Daily February 25, 2002)