Excerpted below is the full text of the Introduction to Horizon Advisory’s first in-depth report in The China Standards Series, China Standards 2035: Beijing’s Platform Geopolitics and “Standardization Work in 2020”:
Introduction to China Standards 2035: Beijing’s Platform Geopolitics and “Standardization Work in 2020”
Made in China 2025 – China’s bid to define global manufacturing – caused a stir when it was launched in 2015. But that ten-year program is just the tip of the iceberg. It is not a stand-alone project. Rather, it provides the positioning for the next, bigger move; a program to define the rules of global production and exchange: China Standards 2035. China Standards will outline, explicitly, the strategic foundation that was largely overlooked in Made in China 2025. It will lay out Beijing’s plans to transfer “Go Out,” “Two Markets, Two Resources,” and “military-civil fusion” into global control.[1]
As the Chinese commentary puts it, “Made in China 2025 is an important program and development goal for manufacturing. It is now well known. But there is another plan and goal that is more important, that is deeper, that is more ambitious. It was officially launched on March 1, 2018. It is the China Standards 2035 project.”[2]
For the past two years, China Standards 2035 has been in the planning phase. Managed by the China Academy of Engineering, the China Standards 2035 working group has been engaged in research programs, workshops, and deliberations. The working group completed its two-year planning project at the beginning of March 2020. On March 16, the National Standardization Committee released its preliminary report, the “Main Points of National Standardization Work in 2020” (2020年全国标准化工作要点).
The Main Points of National Standardization Work in 2020 constitute the initial roadmap for the China Standards 2035; the set of actions to be taken, and positioning to be acquired, over the next year. Before the year is out, the roadmap will be expanded into the "National Standardization Strategy Outline” to frame China Standards 2035. For now, the 2020 program presents the next steps in China’s grand strategy.
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[1] Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, Viral Moment: China’s Post-COVID Planning, Horizon Advisory, March 15, 2020, https://www.horizonadvisory.org/news/coronavirus-series-report-launch-viral-moment-chinas-post-covid-planning; Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, “China and the Great Network Power,” Providence Magazine, October 15, 2019, https://providencemag.com/2019/10/china-and-the-great-network-power/; Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, Military-Civil Fusion: China’s Approach to R&D, Implications for Peacetime Competition, and Crafting a US Strategy, 2019 USN/NPS Acquisition Research Symposium, May 2019.
[2] 知道“中国制造2025”，了解“中国标准2035”吗？这个更重要！[Do you know "Made in China 2025" and "China Standard 2035"? This is more important!], March 19, 2020.