On March 17, MOFCOM Spokesman made a statement on the general supervision arrangement after the transitional period of cross-border e-commerce retail import.

Approved by the State Council, in May 2016, China introduced the transitional period policy of relevant supervision requirement of cross-border ecommerce retail import. In November 2016, the transitional period was further prolonged to the end of 2017. In order to do better the follow-up work after the transitional period, according to the requirements of the State Council, MOFCOM, together with the State Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs, State Administration of Taxation, General Administration of Quality Supervision and State Food and Drug Administration, profoundly carried out investigations, fully listened to the suggestions of local governments, industries and enterprises and positively studied the supervision mode adapting to the development features of cross-border e-commerce retail imported commodities which have trading, personal and low-value attributes.

In order to promote the stable and sound development of cross-border e-commerce retail import, approved by the State council, the supervision mode of cross-border e-commerce retail import remains stable on the whole at the present stage, and the cross-border e-commerce retail import commodities are supervised as personal belongings. On this basis, efforts will be made to further optimize and improve supervision measures and do a good job in quality safety risk control by strengthening the entity responsibility of e-commerce enterprises. Efforts should also be made to build risk emergency response mechanism, and further adopt measures to strictly supervise the imported commodities with comparatively great quality safety risks. In the future, efforts will be made to further improve supervision mode according to requirements in combination with e-commerce legislation and the development situation of the cross-border e-commerce retail import.

In order to promote the comprehensive pilot zone of cross-border e-commerce "to try and to do," and at the same time to control risks properly, the new supervision mode will be implemented in the approved pilot cities of cross-border e-commerce retail import and the comprehensive pilot zones of cross-border e-commerce, including 15 cities such as Hangzhou, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hefei, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Dalian, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Fuzhou and Pingtan.

The above supervision arrangement will be implemented from January 1 2018, before which the transitional period policy of the supervision of cross-border e-commerce retail import will continue to be executed. Next, the relevant departments will study and introduce specific implementation rules according to the functional division and continuously promote the sound development cross-border e-commerce retail import.