Australia to China
Checked 2026-09-29
Public law and official guidance, published as research. Not legal, tax or financial advice.
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The China-Australia FTA (ChAFTA, done 17 Jun 2015; implementing Act in force 20 Dec 2015) and RCEP (in force 1 Jan 2022) does not change gold treatment: China's import duty on HS 7108 is nil for all and import-stage VAT is exempt, while the PBoC per-batch import permit and first-trade on the Shanghai Gold Exchange apply to every origin. The pair's distinctive feature is the Perth Mint's SGE-accredited kilobar business (about 100 t of doped bars mostly to the SGE in 2018-21, per the Australia module) and a very large mirror gap: China records about four times what Australia reports exporting to it.
How sure this page is
- Official guidance 1
- Secondary 1
- Researcher's note 2
Where practice departs from the law
What credible sources show happening that the law does not provide for.
Australia's HS 710812 export table (US$5.3bn total) is far smaller than its HS 7108 total (US$23.6bn) and shows nearly identical unit values for every destination, so its HS 6-digit destination data are unreliable for this corridor. A DFAT note lists gold (SITC 971) as not confidential.
Official guidanceResearcher's note: The DFAT confidentiality note is undated; cause of the HS-6 pattern not established.
China's recorded imports from Australia were about four times Australia's recorded HS 7108 exports to China in 2024. China records imports by country of origin, so Australian-refined bars routed via Hong Kong, Singapore or elsewhere count as Australian in China but not in Australia's destination data. In 2016 the ABS told BullionStar it reassigns some Hong Kong-destined gold to China as the likely final destination, which shows destination data on this corridor are adjusted.
Figures: CN US$8,257.7m / 113,174 kg vs AU US$2,022.8m / 28,828 kg
SecondaryResearcher's note: Origin-versus-destination explanation is the researcher's inference; whether ABS still applies the HK-to-China reallocation is unknown.
What we could not obtain
Documents the research needed and could not get, where they might be, and why.
No gaps recorded