GB 18267-2013Cashmere (English PDF)

Foreword

This document was issued on 19 July 2013 by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China, and has been in force since 9 May 2014.

It is the first edition of this standard.

Classification: ICS 59.060.10, CCS W21.

1 Scope

China's mandatory national standard for cashmere. Cashmere is the fine undercoat combed from goats, and China produces most of the world's supply from the herds of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. The standard exists because cashmere is the textile fibre most worth adulterating and the hardest to check by eye: fine sheep wool, yak down and de-haired, stretched or chemically treated coarse hair all look and feel close enough to pass an untrained hand, and the price difference is several-fold. So the requirements turn on identity and measurement rather than on appearance - the fibre diameter and its distribution, the length, the content of coarse hair and of vegetable matter, the colour grading, and the analytical methods that distinguish cashmere from the fibres substituted for it. Because the standard carries no /T suffix, compliance is mandatory in China: a product described as cashmere has to meet it to be lawfully made or sold.

About this edition

GB 18267-2013 is the first edition of this standard. It was issued on 19 July 2013 and has been in force since 9 May 2014.

There is no earlier edition to compare it with, so a specification that has to refer to this subject can only cite GB 18267-2013 itself.

The interval between issue and effect is the transition period. It exists so that producers, laboratories and buyers can requalify products, revise procedures and use up documentation before the new text becomes the one that applies. The date on this page is the official one from the record of the Standardization Administration.

Classification and status

GB 18267-2013 is classified under ICS 59.060.10, in the field of textile and leather technology. ICS is the International Classification for Standards, the same scheme used by ISO and by the national bodies of most countries, which is what allows a Chinese standard to be placed beside its foreign counterparts on subject rather than on number.

Its Chinese Standard Classification code is CCS W21. CCS is the domestic scheme, a letter for the sector and two digits for the subject within it, and it is the code by which the standard is filed and searched in China.

The GB prefix without a suffix marks a mandatory national standard: compliance is required by law for the products or activities within its scope, and a product that does not meet it may not lawfully be placed on the Chinese market.

How a Chinese national standard is set out

Chinese national standards are drafted to the rules of GB/T 1.1, which fixes the order in which a standard is set out. The document opens with a foreword recording the issuing bodies, the relationship to any previous edition and the technical committee responsible for it. Clause 1 is the scope. Clause 2 lists the normative references — the other standards that have to be applied together with this one, and without which its requirements cannot be met. Clause 3 gives the terms and definitions. The technical clauses follow: the requirements themselves, the test or measurement methods by which conformity is established, the inspection rules that say how a lot is sampled and judged, and, for a product standard, the provisions on marking, packaging, transport and storage. Annexes, normative or informative, come last.

GB 18267-2013 runs to 25 pages in the English translation. What is delivered is the complete document in that order: every clause, every table, every figure and every annex of the Chinese original, with the same numbering, so that a reference to a clause number in a contract or a test report points to the same place in both languages.