China releases RoHS catalog

According to Michael Kirschner, president of Design Chain Associates in San Francisco, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has just issued the proposed Key Administrative Catalog for the Pollution Control of Electronic Information Products (Batch 1). Kirschner notes that “this is the infamous ‘catalog’ for which Phase 2 restriction requirements will apply.” He explains it was issued on October 9 and that there’s a public consultation period through November 9. Phase 2 restrictions will go into effect 10 months after the catalog is promulgated.

The items covered include phones (cell, PSTN and wireless) and all manner of printers. Kirschner notes there are some exceptions allowed: “There appear to be a subset of the ones allowed by EU RoHS.” He added that “Phase 2 requires testing by the Chinese labs of the product to verify compliance. The catalog does not address that fact. How they will implement that is still unclear.”

Design Chain Associates has produced an English translation that is available for $89 at the firm’s China RoHS website.