China Trade and Business

Importing from China

Importing from China is a sequence of decisions — where to find a supplier, how to verify it, which trade term to buy on, how to pay, how to inspect and how to ship — each of which moves risk between buyer and seller. The buyer who understands the sequence controls landed cost; the buyer who does not pays for it in surprises.

Exporting to China

Selling into China means clearing three gates: a market-entry structure (distributor, own company or cross-border e-commerce), product compliance (Chinese standards, certification, labelling and registration), and customs (duty, VAT and inspection on the Chinese side). Most failures come from treating the second gate as paperwork.

Customs and tariffs

Chinese customs works from a 13-digit tariff line, three duty-rate columns and a 13 % VAT on imports; on the export side the state refunds part of the VAT paid on inputs. Understanding those four mechanisms — classification, rate column, VAT and rebate — explains most of what appears on a Chinese customs invoice and most of what changed in the tariff disputes of the last years.

Business culture and negotiation

Business in China runs on relationships built over time, on the management of face in every interaction, and on a view of the signed contract as the start of a relationship rather than the end of a negotiation. Foreign visitors who understand those three things avoid most of the misunderstandings that the etiquette lists are trying to prevent.

Company verification and due diligence

Every legal Chinese company has a business licence with an 18-digit Unified Social Credit Code that can be checked free of charge in the national registry. Reading that licence, matching it to the bank account and the chop, and confirming the factory in person are the four steps that stop almost every supplier fraud; commercial databases and audits add depth for larger deals.

Free-trade zones

China's pilot free-trade zones are regulatory test beds inside the customs territory, while bonded zones and comprehensive bonded zones are customs-special areas where goods sit outside the tariff until they enter the domestic market. Hainan is becoming a free trade port with its own tariff regime. Each offers a foreign company something different: easier company formation and market access in the FTZs, duty deferral and re-export logistics in the bonded zones, and a low-tax base on Hainan.

Trade agreements

China trades under WTO rules with almost everyone and under preferential agreements with a growing list of partners: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership across East Asia and Oceania, and bilateral free-trade agreements from ASEAN and Australia to Switzerland, Serbia and Ecuador. For a buyer or seller the agreements mean one thing in practice — a lower duty rate in exchange for a certificate of origin that proves the goods qualify.

Payments and currency

China's currency is one currency with two markets — onshore CNY under exchange control and offshore CNH freely traded — and every cross-border payment passes a bank check that ties money to a trade document. Knowing how that works explains the payment terms Chinese suppliers ask for, how a foreign company gets money in and out, and why a visitor's phone now works as a wallet.

2026 edition

China Trade in Review 2026 (year to date, as of September 2026)

2025 edition

China Trade in Review 2025