Workshop: China and the Standardization of Digital Technologies

June 10-11, 2024

Organized by Daniel Fuchs (Humboldt University of Berlin), Daniel Sprick (University of Cologne) and Marianne von Blomberg (University of Cologne, Zhejiang University, Bern University of Applied Sciences) with support from the German Association for Asian Studies and the European China Law Studies Association

Professor Matthew Erie was pleased to participate in this interdisciplinary workshop which brought together experts in the field of law, political sciences, sociology and anthropology to discuss the dynamics of China’s rising standards power and the input of non-state (and non-Chinese) actors in shaping the development and application of standards for digital technologies.

Background

Standards are technical documents that are negotiated by providers of products, services and practices to enable interoperability across different environments. Often barely visible albeit ubiquitous, they constitute a strong form of self-regulation in markets on the one hand, while also increasingly being directly mandated by governments to ensure legal compliance on the other. Standards formalize practices and provide a normative foundation for their predictability and persistence even across national borders, thereby facilitating geopolitical shifts behind the scenes, excluding some actors and including others. Standing out among emerging economies, the Chinese government has recognized the importance of standard-setting early on and invested considerably in building capacity and expertise in standardization over the past 25 years. Today, China’s regulatory framework and practices in digital technologies heavily rely on technical standards. Based on its domestic efforts in standardization and fuelled by its economic power, China also succeeded in moving from standard-taker to global standard-maker. Chinese standards, whether through China’s involvement with standard-setting in international bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization or through de facto standardization by Chinese firms, increasingly permeate regions beyond China’s borders.

At the same time, standardization by Chinese stakeholders must not only be understood as a centralized, top-down, state-driven and planned process. Governmentally authorized technical experts are not the sole contributors in shaping the emergence of new standards, and whether and how they are implemented depends on the interests and strategies pursued by political, economic and societal stakeholders. In China like elsewhere, standards development depends on the input of a wide range of actors along the chain of production, dissemination and use of a standardized good or service. It is therefore imperative to approach standards and standardization through a bottom-up perspective, focusing on the dynamics and power relations that shape the negotiation and application of standards. China’s push for global leadership in standardization may be predominantly perceived as a hegemonial power grab, which is facilitated by China’s massive investments through its Belt and Road Initiative and in many economies of the Global South. Nevertheless, the development and use of standards is inevitably grounded in and shaped by the respective local context, so that processes of adaptation and acculturation may heavily influence the global diffusion of Chinese standards.

Against this background, the following questions were addressed:

What strategies are employed by Chinese stakeholders in setting standards for digital technologies within international standards developing organizations (SDOs)? How do these strategies compare with strategies by stakeholders from the Global North?
To what extent have Chinese actors been able to promote and implement “de facto” standards for digital technologies beyond international SDOs, and how have Chinese standards been received? How are Chinese standards entangled with, replacing or strengthening existing international, regional and national standards for critical and emerging technologies?
What processes of learning by Chinese stakeholders can be identified in the course of the setting and implementation of standards?
What processes of international cooperation and contestation can be identified with regards to the standardization of digital technologies?
How has China’s national standardization system evolved with regards to the quest of developing standards for digital technologies?
How can we conceptualize the normative power of Chinese standards for digital technologies? How are Chinese standards related to other normative orders? What impact do Chinese standards have on procedural and material aspects of legal systems?
To what extent is China’s growing role in standardization strengthening or weakening marginalized actors within the arena of global standard-setting, such as stakeholders from the Global South and other international civil society representatives?
How does the perspective of standardization break through the dominant state-market dichotomy in law and the social sciences and helps to re-evaluate domestic and global power shifts?