French and international firms in strategic industries face an increasingly challenging competition from China. In the automobile industry, telecoms or the railway industry, Chinese companies have become major players both at home and abroad. This paper explores the role of industrial standards in the reconfiguration of international market competition in sectors where Europeans have long been dominant. China has stepped up its contribution to the issuance of new technical standards. It is currently working on producing a unified set of technical standards for domestic use by 2035. Given the country’s growing participation in international standardization bodies, this new set of domestic standards may have an international influence. The elaboration of new technical standards is an international endeavor, driven by industrial innovation, and China’s new role in this process is not necessarily a threat to competition.

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