China Is Replacing the Standards That Name PVC Resin: GB/T 3402.1 and 3402.2 Take Effect 1 February 2027

Two national standards for vinyl chloride resins were published on 2 July 2026 and replace their 2005 and 2010 editions on 1 February 2027. What is confirmed, what is not, and what a buyer should now check in the COA and the contract.

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Two Chinese national standards that decide how vinyl chloride resins are named, and how their properties are measured, have been replaced. They were issued on 2 July 2026 and take effect on 1 February 2027.

If your purchase contract says only "SG-5", if your incoming inspection sheet cites a standard edition, or if a supplier's certificate carries a number you have never looked up, this is the date to write down.

Everything below comes from the official standard records. Where something is only a work programme, or only a claim made on a sales page, it is labelled that way.

Quick answer: GB/T 3402.1-2026 and GB/T 3402.2-2026 were published on 2 July 2026 and replace the 2005 and 2010 editions on 1 February 2027. The product standard most buyers actually quote, GB/T 5761-2018, is not being replaced — the official record shows it was last reviewed on 1 July 2025 and continued in force. So the work for a buyer is narrow but specific: get every supplier to confirm in writing which standard edition their certificate follows, and stop letting a contract name a grade without naming a standard.

1. What was actually published

The instrument is National Standard Announcement No. 30 of 2026, dated 2 July 2026, approving 508 recommended national standards and one amendment. Three of them touch PVC resin directly.

Both parts of GB/T 3402 are modified adoptions: Part 1 of ISO 24024-1:2021, Part 2 of ISO 24024-2:2021. That single fact explains why the revision happened — the 2005 and 2010 editions were written before that ISO series existed. The official records are open:

• GB/T 3402.1-2026 — official standard record
• GB/T 3402.2-2026 — official standard record
• GB/T 5761-2018 — status and last review conclusion

2. What these two standards actually do

Neither is a product specification. They are the framework underneath the specifications.

Part 1 is the naming side. It establishes a designation system for vinyl chloride thermoplastic resins — which properties distinguish one type of resin from another, and the ranges those properties occupy. The published scope lists five of them.

The scope is equally explicit about what it does not do: it supplies no engineering, performance or processing-condition data for a specific end use. That is the most common misunderstanding about a naming standard — it will not tell you which grade to buy. Grade selection stays a formulation question, answered on your own line.

Part 2 is the method side. It covers sample preparation, conditioning, and which properties are to be determined with which test method. Only the catalogue entry is public, because the document adopts an ISO text and is not offered for free online reading. Its reference list points at the existing GB/T test-method standards for viscosity number, sieve residue, foreign-particle count and fish-eye count. So the properties being measured are not new. What is re-pinned is the framework saying which of them characterise a type of resin, and how the sample behind them must be prepared.

3. What did not change

GB/T 5761-2018, the product standard for suspension general-purpose PVC resin, is still current — the official record shows it was last reviewed on 1 July 2025 with the conclusion "continued in force". The SG grade ladder, with its K-value bands, is unchanged for now, and a technical agreement written around GB/T 5761-2018 does not expire on 1 February 2027.

You will still meet pages from commercial testing services stating that a revised GB/T 5761, sometimes written as a 2025 or 2026 edition, has already taken effect. We could not find such an edition in the official database. One rule covers it: a standard number you cannot find in the official database is a question to put to the supplier, not a reason to reject a shipment.

And labelled clearly as work programmes rather than published standards: the same technical sub-committee has drafting work listed on apparent density, plasticizer absorption at room temperature, the fish-eye test method, and a standard for chlorinated polyvinyl chloride resin. None is in force, and none should be cited on a certificate as though it were.

4. Why a designation standard carries commercial weight

Trade shorthand for PVC resin comes from three places, and they get mixed up constantly.

• Product-standard grades — SG-5, SG-3 and so on, defined by GB/T 5761.
• Producer model numbers — S-700, S-1000, S-1300, defined by a producer's own enterprise standard.
• Standalone properties — K-value, viscosity number, apparent density, quoted with no standard behind them at all.

A designation standard is what makes the three comparable. It fixes the axes — viscosity number, apparent density, sieve residue, plasticizer absorption, paste type — along which two pieces of paper from two companies can be lined up. When the basis is revised, the resin does not change; the vocabulary does. The risk is that the vocabulary stops matching across a deal.

5. The transition checklist

Fourteen months is enough time to do this properly, and short enough that leaving it to January 2027 is a mistake.

6. Where to check what, document by document

One question covers most of the exposure, and it is worth putting in writing before you sign anything: "Which standard edition is this certificate issued against, and can you give me the batch data in the units of that edition?" A supplier who answers that clearly is also telling you that they know which edition they are working to.

Because both new parts adopt ISO texts under copyright, neither is free to read online — but the catalogue records linked in section 1 give the scope, the dates and the drafting committee, which is enough to verify any claim anyone makes about them, including ours. If you want your next order documented against the right edition, with grade, standard edition, units and method stated the same way on the contract, the data sheet and the certificate, send us the grade, the quantity and the destination and we will quote it that way. We usually reply within 12 hours, GMT+8.

Next: How to read a PVC resin bag — what the standard line, the grade line and the net weight on a 25 kg sack actually tell you.