The emergence of an emerging industry is often accompanied by the lack of laws behind it. This is true for domestic e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce. In the current import cross-border e-commerce industry, we found that although cross-border e-commerce complies with the regulations of the regulatory authorities, it is suspected of violating relevant laws.
Take the Chinese labeling of imported food as an example. According to current policies, regulatory authorities do not require that foods imported through cross-border e-commerce be labeled in Chinese. However, with regard to the Chinese labels of imported food, Article 97 of the National Food Safety Law (2015 Revised Edition) clearly stipulates:
Imported pre-packaged foods and food additives shall have Chinese labels; if they are required by law to have instructions, they shall also have Chinese instructions. Labels and instructions shall comply with the provisions of this law and other relevant laws, administrative regulations and national food safety standards of my country, and shall state the origin of the food and the name, address and contact information of the domestic agent. Pre-packaged foods without Chinese labels, Chinese instructions or labels and instructions that do not comply with the provisions of this article shall not be imported.
So, should foods imported through cross-border e-commerce also be subject to this law? Obviously, this is controversial. Literally speaking, the “import” in the regulations should include any form of import, whether it is traditional general trade import or new cross-border e-commerce import. However, the regulation follows Article 66 of the 2009 version of the Food Safety Law, and cross-border e-commerce was not proposed by the Ministry of Commerce in 2012. In other words, when the legal provisions were formulated, cross-border e-commerce did not exist as a form of import. Therefore, from the original intention of the legislation, the “import” in the regulations refers to general trade import, not cross-border e-commerce import.
However, in the specific judgment, this point seems to be undisputed.