Lately, the General Administration of Customs ("GAC") has issued the Announcement on Regulating the Tran-customs Transportation Business (the "Announcement"), effective from January 1, 2018.
It is made clear in the Announcement that customs offices will reject applications filed for the tran-customs transportation of goods, except those under four circumstances, such as "mails, express mails, temporarily imported and exported goods (including goods under the ATA carnet), transit goods, goods carried by China-Europe block trains, goods exported through market-based purchase deals, commodities imported and exported for the cross-border e-commerce retails, duty-free goods, and goods of diplomatic organs and permanent establishments as well as their staff members for the public and private use". According to the Announcement, where imported solid wastes satisfy five requirements, one of which states that "the place from which the imported goods enter the territory of China should be a port particularly designated for solid waste imports", the consigner and the consignee of these imported solid wastes should not apply to go through the formalities for the customs transit to advance the tran-customs transportation, until the customs office has granted its approval. Moreover, the Announcement provides that if it is inappropriate to inspect the imported or exported goods in areas supervised by the port customs office, the consigner and the consignee of these goods could go through tran-customs formalities by declaring in advance at the customs upon approval of the customs office with the jurisdiction, as long as four requirements are fulfilled, such as one saying that "both the consigner and the consignee should be advanced authorized economic operators (AEO)".