Breaking with decades of tradition, ISO will finally have a President without any ties to China. Sung Hwan Cho of South Korea beat out a Chinese candidate to take the largely symbolic role of ISO President.
ISO is run by its Secretary-General, who is currently Sergio Mujica of Chile. The role of ISO President is used as a marketing flagbearer, to give the publishing company political heft on the world stage, and has no real influence on actual ISO policy. However, at least the past six individuals holding the position had some ties with China, showing ISO’s close relationship with that country.
For the past few decades, ISO has leaned heavily into partnerships and alliances with the Chinese government, in what internal sources reported to Oxebridge was an attempt to get that nation’s huge population to buy more ISO standards. Instead, the Chinese have largely attacked ISO on two fronts, even as it maintained a friendly posture toward the standards company. First, the proliferation of ISO standards in China was largely through the dissemination of unlicensed “pirate” copies of documents and thus did not show up in ISO’s sales ledgers. Second, China has been working to replace ISO entirely with a set of standards developed internally by its government but then exported for international use.
Whether the election of Sung is a result of ISO finally coming to grips with China’s attempt to compete with ISO, or just a simple ballot result, is not clear. But while it is unlikely Sung will have much influence on ISO’s operations, the election of a South Korean over a Chinese competitor sends a rare stinging rebuke from ISO to the Chinese government.
