Be alert to “Free Trade Zone” Outlets
After the approval of pilot free trade zones in Tianjin, Guangdong and Fujian provinces, plenty of outlets are emerging, and consumers nationwide are rushing to go shopping. Most of Chinese consumers believe that the commodities in free trade zones are free of customs clearance and unitary tax.
As a matter of fact, FTA（Free Trade Area）is essentially different from FTZ（Free Trade Zone）. Owing to the same Chinese name, it is quite easy to misunderstand their concepts.
A free-trade area is the region encompassing a trade bloc whose member countries have signed a free trade agreement (FTA). Such agreements involve cooperation between at least two countries to reduce trade barriers—import quotas and tariffs— and to increase trade of goods and services with each other. For example, China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement etc.
A free trade zone (FTZ), a specific class of special economic zone with fence isolation, carries out protective tariff for the goods entering FTZ instead of reducing the tariff, such as the pilot free trade zones in Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong and Fujian etc. However, when the commodities are entering FTZ or sold in FTZ, the customs clearance shall be carried out and the importing unitary tax shall be paid in accordance with normal customs clearance procedures.
So far, there is no qualification to set up free-tariff stores and also no the policy to reduce the tariff in free trade zones. Therefore, the sellers nationwide are running business in the name of “direct selling & zero risk in free trade zones” so as to attract the consumers’ attention, which is kind of publicity activities to mislead consumers.
When rushing to free trade zones from far away, consumers found out that all the goods are taken from various domestic trading companies. Compared with supermarkets and entity stores, the prices are not cheaper, and some even more expensive. Some careful consumers noticed that Chinese labels of some commodities indicated different importing places. It is estimated that those commodities are not directly offered by suppliers overseas, but are sold in the name of outlets in free trade zones after “several circulation”in China market.
Under the condition of hot hype about direct selling in free trade zones, consumers shall focus whether the goods have Chinese rear labels and avoid to be cheated by the merchants when purchasing the imported commodities. Please don’t consider the products with foreign front & real labels to be the genuine imported ones. The State Inspection & Quarantine Bureau has clearly stipulated that the imported food labels must have formal Chinese labels.
AS the First Mover supported by the Ministry of Commerce of the PRC, Haiwei Liquor Trading Market was set up in free trade zone and bears the responsibility to lead the market into legalization, standardization and regularization. Meanwhile, Haiwei possesses the qualification to set up one direct distributor in each county/district all over China. All the wines are directly distributed from foreign wineries to direct distributors for promotion& marketing after the customs clearance and the checkout of Inspection & Quarantine Bureau. Operators and consumers can taste and purchase Haiwei wines at ease.
After a period of pilot free trade zones’ normal operation, it is believed that the innovative system and high efficiency will be improved a lot, which will bring in more benefits for the enterprises in free trade zones. Consumers would better have a reasonable consumption in accordance with the relevant policies.
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