A French producer arriving in China usually has an importer lined up and assumes the importer handles everything. The importer handles the Chinese side. The producer's own obligations start earlier, in France, and a bottle cannot clear customs if they were skipped.
Layer one: registration
The producing establishment must be registered with Chinese customs, and the foreign exporter and Chinese importer must both be recorded. The registration attaches to the site, not to the product — one registration covers your range, and a change of address or corporate name that you forget to update invalidates it.
Note that the framework governing this registration was replaced in 2026. Anyone still describing the procedure by the number of the previous decree is working from an outdated brief — worth checking when you choose an adviser.
Layer two: the Chinese label
A Chinese-language label is mandatory and it is not a translation of yours. It follows Chinese labelling standards, carries the alcoholic strength by volume, the health warning about excessive drinking, and the producer's registration number. Getting it approved before the container sails is ordinary practice; getting it wrong means the goods sit in port at your expense.
Layer three: three taxes, not one
Import duty, consumption tax and import VAT apply in sequence, each computed on a base that includes the previous one. This is why a landed price built by adding a single percentage to your ex-works price is always wrong, and always wrong downward. Rates are adjusted periodically and provisional rates are common, so have them confirmed against your tariff line at the time you quote, not from a figure in last year's presentation.
The brandy measure, stated accurately
China imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on wine spirits originating in the European Union in small containers, following an investigation closed in 2025. Companies that signed a minimum price undertaking are exempt from the duty for as long as they respect that price; the others pay it. The measures remain in force.
Two things follow. The undertaking is individual and nominative: it protects the signatory, not the category, and it lapses if the floor price is breached. And this file is politically tied to the wider European–Chinese trade dispute, which means it does not move on its own merits. Plan on the measures continuing, and treat any improvement as upside.
The registration and labelling obligations apply regardless of the anti-dumping question. A producer outside the brandy category still has the full compliance path; a producer inside it has that path plus a commercial problem.
Where to read it yourself
Official pages, opened and checked on 15 October 2026. Where a rule changes, these are the addresses that change with it — this article does not.