Vehicle and component requirements in China are set through national standards and administrative measures, with accompanying documentation required in Chinese. The most concrete language obligation sits in the household-vehicle repair, replacement and return rules, which name a Chinese conformity certificate among the documents that must travel with the vehicle.
This page is compiled from public official sources and has not yet been checked line by line against the Chinese originals by a reviewer with Chinese regulatory reading capability. Every claim carries a source and a retrieval date so you can verify it yourself; confirm before relying on it for a filing or an external commitment.
Each row states what was established, the provision it rests on, and when it was retrieved. Rows marked to verify are ones this research could not settle against an official provision — they are shown rather than omitted.
| Document | Chinese required | Detail | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product conformity certificate | Required | Article 8 lists what the producer must supply with a household vehicle, and names the conformity certificate specifically as a Chinese one. This is the clearest language obligation in the household-vehicle rules: the other accompanying documents are named without an explicit language clause in the same article. Whether the owner manual and maintenance handbook carry an explicit Chinese-language mandate of their own, rather than following from the certificate clause, was not confirmed from this text. | Provisions on Liability for Repair, Replacement and Return of Household Automotive Products, SAMR Order No. 43 (2021), Article 8 | www.gov.cn2026-09-04verifiable |
| Owner manual, warranty certificate, maintenance handbook | Required | The same article requires the producer to supply the owner manual, the warranty certificate and the maintenance handbook with the vehicle, alongside the product consistency certificate and, where tools are included, an accessory list. These are the documents a Chinese buyer is expected to read, which is the practical reason they are produced in Chinese even where the article does not spell the language out. | SAMR Order No. 43 (2021), Article 8 | www.gov.cn2026-09-04verifiable |
| Warranty certificate content | Required | Article 9 fixes what the warranty certificate must contain, across eight categories: vehicle identity including VIN and production date, producer contact and service line, seller details with invoice and delivery dates, coverage periods and compensation coefficients, and — for electric vehicles — the battery capacity degradation limit. Each of these is a field a translator can get structurally wrong without the sentence reading wrong. | SAMR Order No. 43 (2021), Article 9 | www.gov.cn2026-09-04verifiable |
| Recall notice to owners | Required | Where a defect is confirmed, Article 18 requires the producer to publish information in a form the public can actually reach, covering the defect itself, the emergency handling method that avoids harm, and the measures the producer will take. Article 17 requires the recall plan filed with the authority to be given to dealers at the same time. This is public-facing text written under time pressure, which is exactly when terminology drifts from the manual it is supposed to match. | Regulation on the Administration of Recall of Defective Automotive Products, State Council Order No. 626, as revised in 2019, Articles 17 and 18 | www.gov.cn2026-09-04verifiable |
| Records retained for the authority | Not required | Article 9 requires producers to keep design, manufacturing, labelling and inspection records together with first-owner information for not less than ten years. Article 10 requires reporting of basic product information, technical parameters, owner data, repair and replacement incidents, and recall action taken outside China. Labelling records being explicitly in scope means label wording has to remain reproducible a decade later, not only correct at launch. The regulation does not state a language for these records; the Chinese-language point here is about label wording being retrievable, not about the record format. | State Council Order No. 626, as revised in 2019, Articles 9 and 10 | www.gov.cn2026-09-04verifiable |
| Electric vehicle safety standard in force | Not required | GB 18384-2020 has been withdrawn and fully replaced by GB 18384-2025, which applies to new model declarations from 1 July 2026. Any Chinese-language technical material still citing the 2020 version as the governing standard is citing a withdrawn text. This is a terminology problem as much as a regulatory one: the replacement changes requirements around power disconnection, thermal fault warning and insulation monitoring, and the wording attached to those functions changes with them. The published full text of GB 18384-2025 was not located on the public standards platform during this research. The transition dates should be confirmed against the current standard text before being relied on. | National standards platform record for GB 18384, showing GB 18384-2020 as withdrawn and replaced in full by GB 18384-2025 | std.samr.gov.cn2026-09-04verifiable |
Vehicle terminology in China is anchored to national standards rather than to a company glossary, and those standards move. GB 7258-2017 remains the in-force technical specification for the safety of power-driven vehicles operating on roads. On the electric side the anchor has already shifted: the 2020 electric-vehicle safety standard is withdrawn and the 2025 replacement governs new model declarations from July 2026. A termbase built against the older standard will keep producing text that reads correctly and cites a document that no longer applies.
Terminology maintenance for this sector is not a one-off exercise. When a governing standard is replaced, the affected terms have to be traced through every document that inherited them — manuals, on-screen text, service documentation and warranty material — not corrected only where someone happens to notice.
It is not. The national standards platform records GB 18384-2020 as withdrawn, replaced in full by GB 18384-2025. Material prepared from a 2020-era reference set will cite a standard that has been superseded — and because the citation itself looks well-formed, review passes tend not to catch it.
std.samr.gov.cnIts content is set by regulation. SAMR Order No. 43 fixes eight categories that the certificate must carry, including the battery capacity degradation limit for electric vehicles. Treating it as marketing copy risks dropping a required field rather than merely phrasing one awkwardly.
www.gov.cnThe regulation requires the producer to publish recall information in a way the public can reach, covering the defect, the emergency handling method and the corrective measures — in addition to giving dealers the filed recall plan. The owner-facing text is a required output, not an optional communication.
www.gov.cnLabelling records must be kept for not less than ten years, along with design, manufacturing and inspection records and first-owner information. What was printed on a label has to remain retrievable long after the model has left the line.
www.gov.cnNo public case naming a document or language problem as the stated cause was found for this sector. What follows is the regulatory position, recorded without predicting outcomes.
The household-vehicle rules name the Chinese conformity certificate among the documents that must be supplied with the vehicle, and fix the content of the warranty certificate. No public case was located in which a document or language defect was stated as the ground for an enforcement action.
www.gov.cnProducers must publish defect information, emergency handling methods and corrective measures in a publicly reachable form, and must submit progress and summary reports on the recall. Whether any recall has been questioned on the wording of that public notice was not established from public sources.
www.gov.cnGB 18384-2020 is recorded as withdrawn. Documentation citing it as the governing electric-vehicle safety standard is citing a superseded text; the consequence of doing so in a specific filing was not established and is not predicted here.
std.samr.gov.cnThe product conformity certificate. Article 8 of SAMR Order No. 43 names it as a Chinese certificate among the items that must be supplied with a household vehicle. The other accompanying documents are listed in the same article without an explicit language clause, which is why we describe the certificate separately rather than folding everything into one blanket statement.
Yes. Article 9 sets out eight categories it must contain, including vehicle identity and VIN, producer and seller details, coverage periods and compensation coefficients, and the battery capacity degradation limit for electric vehicles. These are structured fields; a translation can render each sentence acceptably and still lose one.
Not without checking which standards it cites. The electric-vehicle safety standard has changed: GB 18384-2020 is withdrawn and GB 18384-2025 applies to new model declarations from July 2026. Carried-forward text tends to keep old standard numbers intact precisely because they look correct.
Not less than ten years. Labelling records sit alongside design, manufacturing and inspection records and first-owner information in the retention requirement of the recall regulation.
The regulation requires information to be published in a form the public can reach, covering the defect, the emergency handling method and the corrective measures. It does not spell out a language clause in that article, but the audience is Chinese owners. Confirm the current wording before relying on this for a live recall.
Yes. GB 7258-2017, the technical specification for the safety of power-driven vehicles operating on roads, is recorded as in force with an implementation date of 1 January 2018.
We can set out what the cited provisions require and where your material does not correspond to them, with the source for each point. Whether a specific submission is accepted is decided by the competent authority, and a determination on that belongs to a qualified professional in China.
The following could not be established against an official source in this round, and so was not written into the findings above. It is listed so you can see where the research stops.
Regulatory research is a separate service line. It is not a tier of the L1–L4 translation service levels.
This page presents regulatory research intended to help companies understand documentation requirements in a target market. It does not constitute legal advice and is not a substitute for qualified legal counsel.
All regulation numbers, effective dates, and status indicators on this page carry a source and a retrieval date. Regulations may change after that date. For determinations of legal effect, the official-language text and the current rules of the competent authority govern.
Before this material is used for filing, certification, or any external commitment, we recommend review by a licensed attorney in the target market.
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