Selling on Amazon From China: The Supplier…

No published figure yet. The authority does not publish this cost in a form we could verify and quote, so this guide covers the procedure only: what to bring, in what order, and where it goes wrong. We will add the figures the moment there is a source for them.

In order

**Establish the entity.** A marketplace account is held by a legal person, and a Chinese supplier's invoice is issued to a legal person. The seller decides first whether the buying entity is the same entity that holds the account, because the name on the export declaration, the name on the invoice and the name on the account are read against each other. Where they differ, the file has to explain why, and that explanation is a document rather than a sentence.
**Verify the supplier.** A supplier that cannot be verified is a supplier whose export declaration cannot be matched to a buyer. The verification is not a judgement about the company's quality; it is the establishment of who the exporting producer is, because that name is what the origin document and the product file both carry. A trading company and a factory produce different documents for the same goods, and the difference shows up at the destination.
**File the export declaration.** Goods leaving China are declared to customs by an entity entitled to declare. The declaration carries the goods description, the quantity, the value and the destination, and it is the record that the shipment legally happened. A seller who has bought on terms where the supplier declares is relying on the supplier's declaration matching the seller's own records — and where it does not, the mismatch is discovered at the destination, not at the factory.
**Obtain the origin document.** The certificate of origin is what decides whether a preferential rate applies where the goods land. It is issued by a chamber of commerce or another authorised body, and it is issued against the export declaration. This is why the order is fixed — an origin document cannot be obtained before the export it describes exists, and a rate cannot be claimed at the destination without it.
**Assemble the product file.** The certificate or test report that lets the goods be sold in the destination market is a separate document from everything above, issued by a testing body against the destination's rules rather than China's. It is the one item on this list that the supplier usually cannot produce on request, because it is written for the buyer's market.
**Book the inbound shipment.** Only now does the FBA shipment exist as an operational thing — goods that have cleared export, carry an origin document, and have a product file behind them, moving to a fulfilment centre under a shipment plan.

AI Summary

The question behind this page is not whether Amazon operates in China. It is what a seller has to assemble before goods bought from a Chinese supplier can leave the country and be received at a fulfilment centre. That is a sequence, not a purchase: an entity that can hold an account and sign a declaration, a supplier whose identity survives verification, an export declaration filed against the goods, an origin document that decides the duty at the other end, and a product file that decides whether the listing survives. Each one blocks the next, and the order matters more than the paperwork itself.

Definition

The procedure by which a seller buying from a Chinese supplier establishes the entity, supplier, export, origin and product records that a cross-border marketplace account and an FBA inbound shipment both depend on, for goods shipped from China.

What happened

The searches that lead here are mostly one question asked several ways: does Amazon operate in China, can I buy cheap there, where are the suppliers, and can I sell on Amazon from China. The honest answer to the first is that the marketplace question and the sourcing question are separate, and the procedure below is the sourcing half — the part that is decided in China, by Chinese offices, before any marketplace sees the goods.

Steps

Establish the entity. A marketplace account is held by a legal person, and a Chinese supplier’s invoice is issued to a legal person. The seller decides first whether the buying entity is the same entity that holds the account, because the name on the export declaration, the name on the invoice and the name on the account are read against each other. Where they differ, the file has to explain why, and that explanation is a document rather than a sentence.
Verify the supplier. A supplier that cannot be verified is a supplier whose export declaration cannot be matched to a buyer. The verification is not a judgement about the company’s quality; it is the establishment of who the exporting producer is, because that name is what the origin document and the product file both carry. A trading company and a factory produce different documents for the same goods, and the difference shows up at the destination.
File the export declaration. Goods leaving China are declared to customs by an entity entitled to declare. The declaration carries the goods description, the quantity, the value and the destination, and it is the record that the shipment legally happened. A seller who has bought on terms where the supplier declares is relying on the supplier’s declaration matching the seller’s own records — and where it does not, the mismatch is discovered at the destination, not at the factory.
Obtain the origin document. The certificate of origin is what decides whether a preferential rate applies where the goods land. It is issued by a chamber of commerce or another authorised body, and it is issued against the export declaration. This is why the order is fixed: an origin document cannot be obtained before the export it describes exists, and a rate cannot be claimed at the destination without it.
Assemble the product file. The certificate or test report that lets the goods be sold in the destination market is a separate document from everything above, issued by a testing body against the destination’s rules rather than China’s. It is the one item on this list that the supplier usually cannot produce on request, because it is written for the buyer’s market.
Book the inbound shipment. Only now does the FBA shipment exist as an operational thing: goods that have cleared export, carry an origin document, and have a product file behind them, moving to a fulfilment centre under a shipment plan.

Why now

Two things have moved the order of these steps rather than their content.

The first is that origin data has become an electronic record rather than a paper fallback. Where a preferential rate depends on origin data being confirmed, the confirmation is now a step with a status, and a shipment that reaches the destination before that status is settled is a shipment whose rate is not yet decided. The practical consequence for a seller is that the origin document is no longer something produced at the end of the file; it is on the critical path.

The second is that destination-market product rules are enforced against listings rather than against shipments. A product file that is missing does not stop the container; it stops the listing, after the goods have been paid for, shipped and received. That inverts the old habit of treating the product certificate as the last item to arrange.

So what

Read the list backwards and the cost structure becomes visible.

The entity and the supplier verification cost time and nothing else, and they are the two steps that cannot be fixed later — an account held by the wrong entity, or a supplier whose name does not match the declaration, is a problem that surfaces when money is already committed.

The export declaration and the origin document cost the supplier’s attention, and they are the steps a seller most often delegates without checking. Delegation is fine; not reading the result is not, because the origin document is the only item on the list that changes the duty at the destination.

The product file is the step that is priced in the destination currency and paid after the goods have moved. It is also the step most likely to be missing, because it is written for a market the supplier does not sell into.

The order is the whole procedure. A seller who arranges the product file first, then the supplier, then the entity, will redo the first two. A seller who arranges the entity, then the supplier, then the declaration, then the origin document, then the product file, then the shipment, does each step once.

For the document set that travels with the container itself, the checklist in Importing From China: The Documents That Decide Whether the Container Moves sets out who issues each one and what a missing one costs; this page is the seller-side sequence that sits in front of it.

How confident

What we know: The steps above are the sequence the documents impose on each other: an origin document is issued against an export declaration, a declaration is filed by an entity entitled to declare, and a product certificate is issued against the destination market’s rules rather than China’s. The three official sources named for this article — the General Administration of Customs, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the China Association of Chambers of Commerce for Importers and Exporters — were each attempted on 2026-10-30 and each refused this network, so no figure from them is quoted here. The State Council policy index was fetched on 2026-10-30 and carries navigation only.
What we do not know: The documents do not state, on any page this run could reach, the fees, the processing periods, the thresholds or the rejection rates attached to any of these steps. This article therefore contains no amount, no rate and no number of days, and a reader should not infer one from the shape of the process. Whether a given marketplace account can be held by a given entity, and what a specific destination market requires in the product file, are questions for the marketplace and for that market’s authority, not for this page.
How to check: The customs pages at customs.gov.cn for the export declaration and origin documentation, the State Administration for Market Regulation at samr.gov.cn for the registration record behind a supplier’s name, and the China Association of Chambers of Commerce for Importers and Exporters at cacs.mofcom.gov.cn for the chambers that issue origin documents. Each was unreachable from this network on 2026-10-30; a reader inside China, or on a network those offices answer, can read them directly.

Last checked 2026-10-30, next review 2027-04-28. Every figure above names its source and the date it was read. This page is a guide, not legal, tax or immigration advice — confirm with the authority before acting on a deadline.

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