NCARB Ratifies Historic Reciprocity Agreement With China

Delegates representing NCARB's 55 member boards voted recently to ratify a two-phase Cooperation Agreement that sets in motion a step-by-step process for accomplishing the mutual recognition of architects between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China. The historic action was taken at the Council's 80th Annual Meeting and Conference in Charleston, South Carolina.

The new Agreement builds upon a substantial record of cooperation that has been realized during the '90s by NCARB and its Chinese counterpart-the National Administration Board of Architectural Registration (NABAR). Most notably, NCARB, by invitation, has served as a professional resource to NABAR as they have developed an examination patterned essentially on NCARB's Architect Registration Examination (ARE). Chinese candidates for registration have been taking this examination since 1994.

The Cooperation Agreement is designed to accomplish two objectives-one of them barely a year away and the other still some distance off. The short-range objective will be reached on July 1, 2000, when a "Bilateral Accord" between NCARB and China comes into full force. This Accord has been devised as an interim measure that enables a "foreign architect," whether U.S. or Chinese, to practice architecture under specified conditions and "in affiliation with a local architect." It allows for the likelihood that the new Agreement's long-range objective- "to achieve a Mutual Recognition Agreement that will regulate the practice of architecture between the United States and the People's Republic of China"-could take several years. This possibility is well understood by both parties. Commenting on the Agreement, Zhang Qinnan, NABAR's Vice President, said, "It is most important for our future generations."

Before satisfying the requirements of the Mutual Recognition Agreement, both NCARB and NABAR have a great deal of work to do. By the terms of the recently ratified Cooperation Agreement, each must analyze the other's education, training, and examination systems to determine if, "for the purpose of mutual recognition, those systems can be accepted as equivalent." If a system is found "deficient," that deficiency will have to be corrected. Both parties recognize that such corrections could be time-consuming, if not daunting. But after years of cooperation, they find "much commonality in {their} structure which makes it feasible to seek mutual recognition."

Fortunately, one of the potentially most difficult issues was resolved at a leadership meeting last April in Beijing, when NABAR agreed that all transactions, including the NCARB Architect Registration Examination, are to be in English. The Agreement's language relating to the ARE is as follows:

". . . NABAR shall accept the ARE given in English as fulfilling all Chinese requirements for architectural examination and as appropriate for registration and the practice of architecture in China and agree that any Chinese candidate seeking NCARB Certification must demonstrate that he or she satisfies the NCARB Examination Standard."

The language question was actually addressed by NCARB nearly a year ago, when the first draft of a Cooperation Agreement was written as a "generic" agreement. As one of its authors, NCARB's President Joseph P. Giattina, Jr., FAIA, has explained, "This Agreement was founded on the premise that the Council's 55 Member Boards and 10 Canadian Provinces have accepted standards for the education, training and examination of an entry-level architect. If another country accepts those standards, we have the basis for mutual recognition. We felt that the English-language requirement was both necessary and realistic: necessary if our Member Boards were to support it, and realistic because English is increasingly the language of globalization."

China happens to be the first country to join NCARB in ratifying the Cooperation Agreement. Since it is also the world's most populous (see the "China Fact Sheet" attached), NCARB's expectation and hope is that other countries will follow the lead of NABAR.

(For a copy of the full text of the Cooperation Agreement, contact Michiel Bourdrez mbourdrez@ncarb.org at the Council Office.)