Three Standard Pitfalls: Exposing Compliance Gaps in the Consumer Market | "315" Special Report

Reporter Xu Bixin

In the consumer field, standards are the legal basis for determining whether a product is qualified. Whether it’s the pilling resistance of clothing, additive content in food, or safety performance of home appliances, most products on the market have a set of standard codes composed of characters and numbers. As long as the product meets these code requirements, it is legally considered a “qualified product.”

However, the Economic Observer has found that behind many consumer rights disputes lies a fundamental question of “standards”: when consumers question their experience due to dissatisfaction, companies often respond with a “certificate of conformity”—the product indeed meets standards, but being “compliant” does not equal consumer “satisfaction.”

To clarify this contradiction, the Economic Observer has reviewed recent consumer complaints and media reports, categorizing these disputes into three typical issues. These phenomena not only harm consumer rights but also create a survival environment where high-standard, quality enterprises face the “bad money drives out good” effect.

Choosing Lower Standards: When “Compliance” Becomes the Minimum

The Standardization Law clearly states that technical requirements to safeguard personal health and safety, property safety, national security, ecological environment, and basic needs of economic and social management should be enforced through mandatory national standards.

The law also stipulates that recommended national standards, industry standards, local standards, group standards, and enterprise standards should not be lower than the relevant technical requirements of mandatory national standards. The state encourages social groups and enterprises to develop group standards and enterprise standards that exceed the requirements of recommended standards.

However, in practice, some companies prefer to adopt more lenient general standards rather than higher industry or group standards.

Examples

1. Water Buffalo Milk Mixed with Regular Milk

Most “water buffalo pure milk” complies with GB25190 “National Food Safety Standard: Sterilized Milk,” which only specifies that raw milk (from cows or sheep) is used as the raw material, without differentiating water buffalo milk, yak milk, etc. This allows companies to highlight the “water buffalo milk” concept on packaging but mix in regular milk in the ingredients. In fact, the industry standard DBS45/037 “Local Food Safety Standard: Sterilized Water Buffalo Milk” clearly states that ultra-high temperature sterilized water buffalo milk and preserved sterilized water buffalo milk are both made from raw water buffalo milk. However, since this standard is not mandatory, few water buffalo milk products follow it.

2. All-Aluminum Furniture Cutting Corners

The new environmentally friendly product category of all-aluminum furniture has a group standard T/LNFA002—2019 “General Technical Conditions for All-Aluminum Furniture,” but most manufacturers apply the general metal furniture standard GB/T3325-2024 “General Technical Conditions for Metal Furniture.” This standard does not specifically regulate core indicators such as aluminum thickness, welding strength, or honeycomb panel structure unique to all-aluminum furniture. Due to the lack of unified measurement standards, the market has seen issues like false labeling of aluminum sheet thickness and corner-cutting.

Standards Not Matching: Major Standards Covering Subcategories

In some consumer sectors, existing standards cannot accurately match or regulate the core quality features of emerging, niche, or specially processed products.

The first reason is the time lag between standard formulation and market innovation: when new products or categories emerge, targeted standards may not yet be established or issued, forcing companies to resort to broader category standards. Second, there is a mismatch between the generality of major standards and the specificity of subcategories. Major standards aim to cover as many products as possible, setting “maximum common denominators,” but often do not address the unique “quality features” of niche categories.

When standards are absent, the corresponding testing methods have not yet been codified into national legal and universal testing standards, making verification or evidence collection difficult.

Examples

1. Difficult to Detect Fake “100% Coconut Water”

A survey by The Beijing News found that four popular coconut water brands tested with isotope analysis showed the presence of external water or syrup additives, with ingredient labels being inaccurate.

Currently, some fruit juice products reference GB/T31121 “Fruit and Vegetable Juice and Beverages,” which mainly targets juice products. However, for “liquid embryo” coconut water, this standard is not highly applicable.

2. “Children’s” Products Turned into Marketing Concepts

Many products on the market claim to be “children’s” specifically, such as “children’s soy sauce,” often priced significantly higher than regular products.

In reality, many “children’s soy sauces” have sodium levels similar to regular low-sodium soy sauces and are also governed by GB/T18186 “General Quality Requirements for Soy Sauce.” Apart from mandatory national standards for infant foods aged 0-36 months, most “children’s foods” do not have dedicated mandatory national standards.

The “Compliance” Trap: Information Asymmetry Allowed by Standards

In fields where the standard system is relatively sound but consumer awareness is insufficient, companies exploit the gap between “standard terminology” and “consumer perception” for marketing. For example, some standards have technical and professional definitions that are not easily understood by laypeople. Companies leverage this information gap to package lower-grade products as high-end categories, raising prices.

The core issue is that standards ensure the “truthfulness” of products at the technical level but do not translate into consumers’ “right to know” at the point of purchase. When companies selectively disclose information—focusing on broad categories rather than specifics, emphasizing initial performance rather than long-term degradation—consumers are misled.

Examples

1. Vague Concept of Leather Furniture

In the leather furniture industry, QB/T1952.1-2023 “Soft Furniture: Sofas” states that sofas covered with natural animal leather or regenerated leather are all “leather sofas.” Sellers often do not specify the type of leather, leading consumers to pay for genuine animal leather but receive regenerated leather.

2. Exaggerated UV Protection in Sun-Protective Clothing

The recommended national standard GB/T18830-2009 “Textiles: Evaluation of Ultraviolet Protection Performance” states that when UPF >40 and UVA transmittance <5%, the product can be called “UV protective.” Some brands only highlight high UPF values measured in laboratories (e.g., UPF100+), while avoiding mention that the UV protection performance significantly declines after several washes.