China is drafting a set of technical standards to better regulate e-commerce transactions and customer reviews on products and services, as authorities seek to intensify efforts to tackle fake products sold online.
Tian Shihong, head of the Standardization Administration of China, said in a work conference on national standardization on Monday that the authority will build a standard system in the e-commerce area, including technical standards that guide e-commerce transactions and the review system for consumers and sellers at e-commerce platforms.
Meanwhile, the authority is also set to draft technical standards for the social credit system as part of an effort to enhance the supervision of e-commerce fraudsters, he said.
Fake products being sold at online platforms have been a key target of Chinese authorities since last year. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce said in a quality report in January that its spot check showed that less than 40 percent of goods tested on Taobao.com, a large consumer-to-consumer platform in China, were authentic.
The report also blamed Taobao for its defective credit and customer system, as it was difficult to tell the authenticity of customer reviews in the online marketplace, and the flawed system also enabled sellers to hire professionals to increase positive reviews.
The platform's customer view system also failed to take into account the complaints filed against the sellers and the punishments given by authorities over misconduct, the report said.
Recognizing standards
The standardization authority will also push forward international recognition of China's technical standards for railways, construction machinery, aviation and aerospace industries, and the energy sector, Tian said.
The authority will also seek to increase the mutual recognition of standards with countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives to enable Chinese enterprises to go global.
Zhi Shuping, a minister with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said at the conference that the standardization authority still has much work to do to improve international recognition of Chinese standards, because currently less than 1 percent of international technical and quality standards are drafted by China.
"We want to enhance the trade and economic cooperation with many countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt. But we found that there are many conflicts in the technical standards of products and services," he said at the conference.
"We can only export our services after there are synchronized technical standards of products in the two countries," he said, adding that international recognition of Chinese standards is even more significant than the recognition of the country's products.
The country is also considering a revision to the law on standardization this year to push the reform of the country's technical and quality standards system, he said.
