China’s New Technical Standardisation Power: A Challenge for Europe

Technical standards, long regarded as non-political product specifications, are increasingly becoming the subject of geopolitical rivalry. This is the result of three factors: First, high technology is becoming a central area of power competition between China and the USA. Second, China’s standardisation approach diverges from the traditional private self-regulation that is shaping international standard-setting. Chinese state steering turns technical standards into a subject of Chinese industrial policy. Third, technical standards have an often-overlooked power potential that is only now being rediscovered. The fact that technical standardisation is becoming an object of geopolitics is a key challenge for the European Union, which has traditionally exerted considerable influence on technical standardisation. This chapter traces the changing role of technical standards by developing the concept of “technical standardisation power” and explains how China effectively uses its party-state permeated economy to gain technical standardisation power. Finally, the chapter summarises the implications for the European Union, develops four future scenarios and outlines how Europe should respond to these developments.