We book mainland China through DTDC's international network. There is no published card rate for China the way there is for our domestic lanes, so we do not put a per-kilo figure on this page: the shipment is quoted per consignment once we know the destination city, the billed weight and exactly what is inside. Mainland China is also the destination where paperwork, not price, decides whether the parcel arrives — so most of this page is about that.
Mainland China runs a real-name system on inbound parcels. Customs expects the consignee to be identifiable — a Chinese national ID number for a personal parcel, or the company’s registration / tax number for anything going to a business. If you cannot get that number from the person receiving the parcel, do not book the shipment: it will sit at the port of entry until someone produces it, and the default outcome is a return at your cost.
The second thing that stops parcels is printed and recorded matter. China regulates imported books, magazines, printed material and media far more tightly than most destinations, and content touching politics, religion or contested borders is routinely seized. This includes maps. An ordinary academic textbook or a novel is not a problem; anything with a political or religious character is, and we will tell you so rather than book it and hope.
Used and second-hand goods are broadly restricted as imports. Sending a well-meant box of your own worn clothes or an old laptop to a relative is one of the more common ways a China parcel goes wrong.
On food, only sealed, factory-packed dry items with a printed ingredient list have a sensible chance. Meat and meat-derived products, dairy, eggs, fresh produce, seeds and plants are prohibited. Home-made sweets, anything moist, and anything without a label are not worth attempting.
Duty and import tax are assessed in China and are payable by the recipient, not by you at our counter. We cannot pre-pay them and we will not guess at them — the figure depends on category and declared value, and any number we invented here would be wrong for your shipment.
Declare honestly and itemise. A single line reading “gift” on an invoice is the slowest possible way through Chinese customs. A list — three cotton shirts, one sealed 500 g packet of coffee powder, two books — with a realistic value against each line moves considerably faster.
Two lists are at work: what DTDC accepts out of India, and what China admits. An item has to satisfy both.
Unsure about one item in the box? Call before you seal it — 9164995001. Two minutes on the phone beats a return from Shanghai.
Small hardware, components and product samples going to a Chinese company address. These clear most predictably because the consignee has a registration number and a person whose job it is to receive the parcel. Give us the company name, the tax number and a contact who speaks to their customs broker.
Signed contracts, degree certificates, notarised papers. The lightest and simplest China shipment there is — nothing to value, nothing to inspect. The consignee ID requirement still applies.
Clothes, sealed dry food, books going to someone studying or working in China. This is where the restricted list matters most: the contents that feel most natural to send — home-made sweets, worn clothes, a religious book — are exactly the ones China stops.
We quote it per consignment. Our domestic pages reproduce a published DTDC card exactly; no such card exists for China, so a per-kilo figure here would be a guess. Give us the city, the weight and the contents, and you get a real number the same day.
Because Chinese customs runs a real-name system on inbound parcels and will not release a shipment without it. For a business consignee it is the company registration or tax number instead. We ask at booking rather than after the parcel is already in the network.
We do not publish a transit figure for China, because the part that varies most — clearance — is not something we or DTDC control. The air leg is predictable; the paperwork check at the other end is not. We would rather say that than print a number you could hold us to.
Only factory-sealed dry items with a printed ingredient list stand a real chance. Home-made, moist, milk-based or unlabelled food should stay in Bangalore. Nothing liquid goes on any route we book, ghee included.
Yes, but they are separate customs territories with entirely different rules — Hong Kong in particular is a free port. A Hong Kong shipment is booked and quoted on its own, never as an extension of a mainland consignment. See our Hong Kong page.
DTDC. We are an authorised DTDC booking partner, your shipment travels on a genuine DTDC air waybill through DTDC's overseas network, and we make no claim to relationships with any other international carrier.
Tell us the destination city, the weight and what is in the box — including the consignee's ID or company number — and we will quote it properly.