Certification in China ensures compliance with local standards through factory audits, technical documentation, and product testing. Only officially registered TIC (Testing, Inspection, and Certification) bodies in China can conduct conformity assessments, and must necessarily obtain China Metrology Accreditation (CMA) certification. Therefore, conformity assessment results obtained from overseas testing, inspection and certification (TIC) bodies are generally not recognised by the Chinese authorities or certification bodies.

At the same time, even TIC bodies legally established in China must be accredited in order to be allowed to conduct testing or issue certification. In practice, most certification schemes in China can be released only by a limited number of officially accredited bodies, which usually do not include foreign TIC bodies legally established in China; these, however, may accept test results from different laboratories in China, which may or may not include foreign ones legally established in China. For instance, CCC certification can only be released by 35 officially recognised certification bodies – none of them is foreign-invested; these certification bodies might accept test results from 243 officially recognised laboratories, 6 of which are foreign-invested. Still, some Chinese TIC bodies may have – out of their own initiative – established partnerships with European laboratories and mutually recognise test results; a number of Chinese TIC bodies have also established subsidiaries in the EU and may offer their services there.

Among Chinese labs, there is strong preference from Chinese customers and even customs enforcement authorities for reports released by Chinese labs which have obtained CNAS accreditation (which, in most cases, is voluntary, with the exception of CCC self-declaration B and third-party certification).