Shipping our stuff? What's restricted? (Shanghai)
My partner and I are about to move from Melbourne to Shanghai.
I've received advice that we should minimise what we ship over as much as possible - so we're just thinking a few clothes, some books, maybe just one box.
Bizarrely, though, I've investigated with Australia Post and apparently these items are prohibited from coming in to China:
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Prohibitions
In addition to items prohibited by Dangerous and Prohibited Goods & Packaging Post Guide and ECI and EPI - Parcels Regulations, China prohibits:
Arms, ammunition, explosives and parts thereof
Addictive narcotics
Animals
Articles which involve State secrets
Bicycles
Cameras
Chinese securities
Clothing or bed linen, used
Coins banknotes, currency notes
Deadly poisons of all kinds
Endangered/rare animals and plants (including specimens thereof) and their seeds or reproducing materials
Food, unclean or from regions affected by epidemic diseases
Films, cinematographic, photographs, loaded recording tapes and videotapes, compact discs (video and audio)
Fans, electric
Fresh pork and all by-products
Jewels or other valuable articles
Manuscripts
Medicines
Personal mail only to foreign students or tourists or non-Chinese passport holders
Plants or plant products with microbes or insects
Platinum, gold and silver
Publications that are politically, economically, culturally or morally detrimental to the People’s Republic of China
Precious stones, whether manufactured or not
Printed matter
Radio-telegraphic receivers and transmitters and parts for such apparatus
Records
Securities of any kind payable to bearer
Storage medium for the computer
Sewing machines
Tape recorders
Televisions
Travellers cheques counterfeit
Valuable cultural relics and other relics prohibited as exports
Weapons
Watches
Transporting food of any kind is prohibited under ECI Platinum.
Packaging
China prohibits items in opaque, sealed containers.
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This basically means NOTHING we want to bring is OK? Is this anyone else's experience?
I'm so confused - if anyone has found a way around this I'd be very keen to know how.
thanks!