On December 29, 2015, the General Administra- tion of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China and the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China released the announcement concerning the adjustment of the Catalogue for Enter-Exit Goods that shall be Inspected and Quarantined by Enter-exit Inspection and Quarantine Authorities, it adjusted the import of compounded rubber as A-class supervision goods, for which the entry inspection and quarantine should be carried out according to relevant standards of General Technical Specification of Compounded Rubber (GB/T 31357-2014), and it has be implemented since February 1, 2016.

The codes of four customs goods involving compounded rubber were 4005100000 (unvulcan- ized compounded rubber mixed with carbon black, etc.), 4005200000 (unvulcanized compounded rubber solution and dispersion), 4005910000 (other unvul- canized compounded rubber plate, sheet and belt) and 4005990000 (other unvulcanized compounded rubber of primary speciation). However, before this adjust- ment, compounded rubber was not listed in the scope of import supervision of the Customs, that is, it was not goods for legal inspection; it was adjusted as A-class supervision, that is, to carry out entry inspection and quarantine according to the new standard on com- pounded rubber.

The insiders thought that listing compounded rub- ber in A-class supervision goods of the Customs would strike the downstream rubber consumers again on the basis of implementation of new standard on compound- ed rubber to make the enterprises of rubber products such as tire face more severe market environment.

Since official implementation of General Tech- nical Specification of Compounded Rubber on July 1, 2015, the import of compounded rubber suffered a disastrous decline, with little monthly import volume, in which, the import volume of compounded rubber in June was 248,000 tons, which dropped to 28,000 tons in July, 25,000 tons in August, 40,000 tons in September, 34,000 tons in October and 30,000 tons in November. From January to June 2015, 812,000 tons of compounded rubber was imported, with a year-on-year (same below) increase of 18.1%; from January to July, 840,300 tons was imported, with an increase of 0.9%; from January to August, 864,900 tons was imported, with a decrease of 8.3%; from January to September, 905,500 tons was imported, with a decrease of 17.6%; from January to October, 939,600 tons was imported, with a decrease of 24.5%; and from January to No- vember, 969,900 tons was imported, with a decrease of 31.1%. It could be seen that since the new standard was implemented on July 1, rubber users like tire enterpris- es had a centralized import of a part of compounded rubber in the first half year, but the implementation of new standard basically blocked the import path of com- pounded rubber. Now compounded rubber is listed as the goods for legal inspection of the Customs, which is one disaster after another for tire enterprises.

It is known that from preparation to implementa- tion of standard on compounded rubber, tire enterprises always actively explored how to use this “new materi- al”, however, over one year of practice of upstream and downstream enterprises proved that the compounded rubber following new standard could not meet the production requirement of tire enterprises both in technology and operation. Moreover, over one year of practice proved that the promotion of new standard not only had no effect on stabilizing the price of domestic natural rubber and increasing the sales, but also made the direct costs of tire enterprises rise by about 5%, ex- cluding indirect costs for formula adjustment, product test, capital turnover, etc.