What to expect at Chinese customs when bringing in items for friends who live there?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 2 Aug, 2023
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Shanghai office of Customs department in China has a guide for international travellers. Looking at your list, you should be fine as none of these fall under prohibited or controlled items…except for designer earrings. Gold items fall under controlled items and you will need to declare that by filling up a customs declaration form and passing through red channel. The only exception is if the total weight of gold is less than 50g, in which case it does not need to be declared for inward visitors into the country.
I don’t know how strict they are enforcing these rules in Shanghai, but in SARs like Macau and Hong Kong they aren’t that bothered.
I looked for what taxation rates are for customs duty in China without any success on finding official documents that mention the actual rates. There are references to preferential rates and conventional rates depending what on what country a traveller is from. Additionally, there is documentation on how exchange rates are handled and it seems it is possible to pay duty in currencies other than Chinese RMB. What I’m not so sure of is whether you will be allowed to pay using Visa/MasterCard since in mainland China they typically use a payment card system called UnionPay.
I don’t have any authoritative information on what the rules are but my guts tell me that you should be fine taking all of these things.
All the stuff can be considered part of your own personal belongings as long as you take them out of the shrink wrapped packaging.
The fact that you wont have them when leaving can be easily explained: You lost them or they got stolen.
I never arrived in China by air. On overland entries my luggage was never checked.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘