China: Exporting products

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Customs procedures for export in China

Customs Procedures

Restrictions

The China’s Ministry of Commerce has classified goods in three categories in order to determine what type of export license is required for each goods: the permitted goods (automatically licensed), the restricted goods and the prohibited goods.The restricted goodscan be exported, but either license approval or annual quotas allows their control and their regulation. The exportation of prohibited products is absolutely banned and cannot be traded.

Export Taxes

Only a few goods and semi-finished products are subject to export duties. As of January 2020, China continues to impose export tariffs or provisional export duties on 107 commodities with fixed and unchanged tax rates.

Export Clearance

An export license is required for a foreign trade company (FTC) as soon as it wants to export goods from China. However, this may not be necessary if the goods are under incoterm FOB (free on board). An export license or permit is a document that gathers information about the exporter, the buyer, the cargo, the value and the mode of transportation and it is issued to firms by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

Necessary Declaration

In general, the supplier provides:

export licensed or permit
certificate of origin
HS Code
invoice
packing list
certificate of fumigation
Value and description of the merchandise
Composition of the merchandise
Finished/semi-finished
Name/contacts of the supplier
Destination of product
Recipient

Controlling the Quality of the Products

Quality Control Organizations: CIS China Inspection Services

Organize a transportation of goods to and from China

Main Useful Means of Transport: Ten ports in mainland China are included among the 30 top container harbors in the world. The port of Shanghai is by far the busiest in the world. The cargo turnover of Shanghai port exceeded 40 million twenty-foot equivalent shipping units (TEUs) in 2018 (latest data available). In 2018, the country shipped 249.8 million TEUs, which was a 5.3% increase on the previous year.

Road freight is the most prominent mode of cargo transportation in China. As of 2018, China had one of the largest road networks in the world. It measured around 4.8 million kilometers, second only to the United States. In 2019 there was a drop in the total volume of goods transported by road in China. Nonetheless, in 2019, cargo road freight traffic volume in China amounted to nearly six trillion ton-kilometers.  

In 2019, the cargo volume of China's air freight traffic amounted to approximately 26.32 billion ton-kilometers. China currently has 238 civil aviation airports, including the world's second busiest in Beijing.

Railroads are the principal mode of transport and the cheapest solution for long distance freight. In 2019, the volume of China's rail freight traffic had amounted to 3.02 trillion ton-kilometers. The country's state railways transported 299 million tons of freight in May 2020, an increase of 11.15 million tons compared to a year ago, according to data from China State Railway Group Co Ltd. There are currently a total of 141,400 km of railway lines in China, including 36,000 km of high-speed lines, the most important in the world, according to China State Railway Group figures. China aims to have about 200,000 kilometers of railway tracks by the end of 2035, including about 70,000 km of high-speed railway.

By Sea

Ports: Shanghai Port
Dalian Port
Guangzhou Port
Transport Professionals: Gefco China
Sinotech International Transportation Co., Ltd.
Zim Integrated Shipping Services
Government Transport Organisations: Ministry of Transport

By Air

Airports: Beijing Airport
Dalian Airport
Shanghai Airport
Chengdu Airport
Guangzhou Airport
Shenzhen Airport
Transport Professionals: Air China
China Southern Airlines
Shanghai Airlines
Government Transport Organisations: Ministry of Transport

By Road

Transport Professionals: Chinese association of road transport (in Chinese)
Government Transport Organisations: Ministry of Transport

By Rail

Transport Professionals: Guangshen Railway Company
China Railway Tielong Container Logistics Co., Ltd
Government Transport Organisations: Ministry of Transport

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