New standards for product barcodes after May 1

Product barcodes are a product’s “identity card,” a “pass” for product circulation, and an important lever for product quality traceability and digital regulatory oversight. Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued a newly revised 《Measures for the Administration of Product Barcodes》, which will take effect on May 1.

“This revision is mainly intended to meet the needs of building a unified national large market, and to provide more solid infrastructure support for the circulation of goods. The revised measures focus on regulating the full life-cycle management of product barcodes.” said Guo Chengguang, deputy director of the Standard Innovation Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation.

“In simple terms, a product barcode is a product’s ‘digital identification.’” Luo Fangping, Party Secretary and Chairman of the China Article Coding Center Co., Ltd., introduced it. After 40 years of development, China’s product barcode system has the largest number of member organizations in the world. Currently, the total number of enterprises applying to use product barcodes in China has exceeded 650,000; the total number of products using product barcodes has surpassed 240 million varieties, broadly covering key industries such as industrial products, food, and medical and healthcare products.

Significantly reducing the burden on enterprises and continuously optimizing the business environment. This revision focuses on pain points and difficulties faced by businesses in handling affairs, further simplifying procedures, reducing approval steps, removing the requirement for qualification recognition for entities that print product barcodes, exempting sellers from the obligation to verify incoming product barcode proof documents, and standardizing related fee standards for product barcodes—so as to genuinely loosen constraints and reduce burdens for enterprises.

By leveraging the role of product barcodes as a product’s “identity card,” and integrating information related to product production and circulation, administrative permits, certification and accreditation, inspection and testing, and more, we will improve the product quality and safety traceability system and enable goods throughout their full life cycle to be traced and verified; at the same time, we will accelerate the digital aggregation of product information, injecting momentum into high-quality industrial development while better safeguarding consumers’ right to know and choice.

This revision further expands the coverage of national standards for product barcodes. It adds the requirement 《Coding and Barcode Representation for Loose Bulk Goods and Bulk Commodities》, further improving the system of product barcode series standards. This measure fills the practical shortcoming of incomplete standard coverage previously, making the application of product barcodes across various types of goods and in all stages more standardized and more operable.

Last year, the State Administration for Market Regulation launched a pilot program for barcode assignment verification for key online-sold products’ quality and safety. Targeting 10 categories, including power banks and e-bikes, as well as products closely related to everyday public safety, it rolled out “traceability via a single code,” building a full-chain regulatory system of “assigning codes at the production source, verifying and displaying codes at platforms, and scanning and using codes by consumers.”

First, starting from the production source, enterprises are required to “register” the product—namely, “assign codes at the source,” and to record the product’s real information faithfully. Second, in the circulation stage, we will push 10 mainstream e-commerce platforms to achieve “platform code verification and dynamic code display,” strictly auditing whether the products sold on the platforms have such codes and whether the information matches. Finally, and most importantly, for consumers: all they need to do is use their phone to scan the code, and they can clearly see the product’s true appearance, which company produced it, and what standard it complies with—down to including the product’s inspection report. Such “penetrating” regulation can precisely identify problem products, dynamically track risks, and effectively curb the chaos of products like power banks that are “not what they claim,” as well as counterfeit and shoddy goods.

During the trade-in of old for new, product barcodes are a key technological means to ensure that government subsidies are issued precisely, effectively preventing loopholes such as “fraudulent subsidy claims” and “arbitrage,” so that good policies truly benefit consumers.

(Edited based on People’s Daily)

【Source: Binzhou Media Network】