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Trade and Investment Minister Simon Birmingham (centre right) meets delegates at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.
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by Michael Smith Shanghai | Australian exporters of dairy products and health supplements have won a reprieve from tough new Chinese e-commerce regulations after authorities agreed to delay the implementation of rules threatening sales in their biggest market.
China announced overnight that the exiting policies on cross border-ecommerce retail imports would continue from January. There would be no new requirements on importers for licensing, registration or record-filing.
Instead, those good would receive "more relaxed regulation as imports for personal use".
The announcement made by China's Premier Li Keqiang is good news for Australian exporters such as Bellamy's, A2 Milk, Blackmores and Swisse, which were worried about complying with the new rules designed to tackle food safety and tax avoidance due to be implemented on Jan 1, 2019.
The decision was announced by China's Premier Li Keqiang late on Wednesday.
"Boosting cross-border e-commerce will help foster high-level opening-up and sustainable growth of foreign trade, drive consumption and create jobs," Mr Li said. "We need to take a holistic approach, exercising prudent yet accommodative regulation to fully unleash the growth potential of crossborder e-commerce."
The China Daily newspaper said China wanted to improve on existing policies around retail imports to increase consumption, which economists fear is slowing down as the world's second-largest economy grapples with high debt and US trade tariffs.
The e-commerce policies announced Wednesday would be extended from 15 cities to another 22 cities, including Beijing, the report said.
China's retail imports of cross-border e-commerce reached 67.2 billion yuan (US$13.4 billion) from January to October, up 54 percent year on year, according to official data.
The report said goods included in the cross-border e-commerce retail imports list enjoying zero tariffs would be extended to another 63 tax categories.
New licensing and labelling regulations for dairy products, vitamins and cosmetics imported into China were due to be introduced in January. However, Australian importers were worried about complying with the new rules designed to tackle food safety and tax avoidance in time because of lack of detail.
President Xi Jinping said in a speech at the opening of a huge import-themed trade fair in Shanghai on Monday that China would accelerate the development of cross-border e-commerce but did not give details.
Analysts and lawyers said some Australian importers faced a hit to their sales if the rules were introduced in two months as previously expected.
