Conversion rate of intl standards hits 88.9%

China's market regulator said it accelerated efforts last year to align domestic rules with international standards, further energize business entities and promote fair competition, as part of a broader drive to support high-quality economic growth and a more unified national market.

At a State Council Information Office briefing on Thursday, the State Administration for Market Regulation said China's overall conversion rate of international standards into domestic ones had reached 88.9 percent by the end of 2025.

On the outbound front, China led the formulation and release of 285 international standards in 2025 in areas including new energy, traditional medicine and brain-computer interfaces, up 26.7 percent year-on-year, the SAMR said.

China also submitted 505 new international standard proposals in fields such as biotechnology, artificial intelligence and industrial internet, a rise of 15.8 percent from a year earlier.

Standards are often described by Chinese officials as a "common language" in global trade and industrial cooperation, and China has increasingly framed standards adoption and formulation as a strategic tool to boost competitiveness in emerging industries.

During the year, authorities adopted 1,510 international standards, with full adoption in sectors such as culture and meteorology, and conversion rates above 90 percent in aviation, construction materials and machinery.

Deng Zhiyong, deputy head of the SAMR, said, "China has also strived to build a unified national market through boosting business vitality and driving fair competition."

In 2025, 25.745 million new business entities were registered nationwide. The number of active enterprises rose 9.8 percent year-on-year, with their share of all registered entities increasing by 4.7 percentage points, said the administration.

Deng said fair competition enforcement remained a priority as China pushes to build a unified national market.

In 2025, regulators carried out random reviews of fair competition policies and urged relevant authorities to rectify measures that hindered market integration. They also investigated a series of antitrust cases in the pharmaceutical sector, leading to sharp price cuts for some drugs, and handled 14,600 unfair competition cases.

The SAMR said it had also moved to address so-called cutthroat competition — destructive price wars and excessive subsidies — through cost investigations, price inspections and regulatory guidance, helping cool aggressive discounting practices.

Notably, the regulator highlighted progress in quality and measurement infrastructure, saying it had broken through 21 key technical bottlenecks in industrial chains and filled 71 urgent gaps in quality-related technologies.

As the world's largest online retail market for 13 consecutive years, China has also tightened oversight of platform companies. In 2025, the SAMR launched new rules on online platform governance and livestreaming e-commerce, targeting problems such as abuse of rules, unreasonable fees, false marketing and opaque algorithms.

"Looking ahead, China would deepen reforms to build a unified national market, further energize business entities, strengthen quality infrastructure and guard against risks in key safety areas, in a bid to support both qualitative and quantitative improvements in China's economic growth," Deng added.

chengyu@chinadaily.com.cn