Six Chinese Carriers Form a Dangerous Goods Pact

1. China: Six Carriers Band Together and Write Booking Access Into the Pact

Ahead of the Golden Week holiday, six domestic container shipping companies jointly issued a public notice setting out mandatory compliance requirements for dangerous goods transport, and at the same time published an industry information-sharing framework and booking risk-control measures. The six companies are PanAsia Shipping, Antong Logistics, Zhonggu Logistics, CRCT Logistics, Hede Shipping and Ningbo Ocean Shipping. The notice sets out five hard requirements:

1. Zero tolerance for concealment and smuggling.The notice explicitly rejects every form of unlawful conduct in domestic container freight, including false declarations, misdeclarations and the unpermitted concealment of dangerous goods by shippers, forwarders and other parties

2. Declarations must be truthful and complete.The name, nature and category of the goods tendered for carriage must be declared truthfully and in full; declaring hazardous chemicals, lithium batteries, oxidizers or other dangerous substances as ordinary general cargo is strictly prohibited

3. Offenders go onto the industry information-sharing list.Where concealment, misdeclaration or smuggling is verified, the signatories will report the party across the industry and add it to the dangerous goods misdeclaration information-sharing mechanism; each member runs its own risk assessment and decides independently whether to accept that party’s bookings. The restriction remains in force until the corrective work is done, the hazards eliminated and the party has passed joint verification, and is lifted only when the industry announces it

4. Industry sanctions do not replace legal liability.Restrictions at the industry level do not lessen or replace any administrative, civil or criminal liability; where concealment or smuggling causes damage to vessels or port facilities, injury or death, or environmental pollution, the responsible party bears the full cost

5. Reporting is welcome.Ports, shippers and all parts of society are invited to report the concealment, misdeclaration and smuggling of dangerous goods, and to safeguard safety and regulatory order together

These six run domestic container services on China’s coastal and intra-Asia trade routes. For manufacturers shipping exports, this is not a direct constraint but an industry weathervane — it shows the carriers’ current stance on concealed dangerous goods.

2. Air Cargo Is Pushing the Same Thing in the Same Week

In the same week, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) released a white paper, Safety and Security in the Cargo Supply Chain, on September 24, 2026, calling for a layered, risk-based approach covering the entire supply chain. IATA’s assessment is that the problem is not legitimate dangerous goods transport, but dangerous goods slipping into the supply chain without permission. The items most often found are lithium batteries, undeclared e-cigarettes and aerosols. The latest figures are below:

More telling, two of the five layers in IATA’s defense point the same way as the ocean move. The first is pushing information sharing: airports are asked to improve coordination and information sharing across the air cargo community. The second is moving screening upstream: shippers, forwarders and postal operators are asked to tighten acceptance controls and make more use of customer and cargo data to flag high-risk shipments before they ever reach the airport. IATA also calls on governments to strengthen oversight and enforcement of dangerous goods requirements.

Strictly speaking, air cargo is still at the stage of calls for action and regulatory debate — it has not, like ocean, turned into an enforceable industry mechanism.But the direction is already clear: from inspecting on arrival to screening before shipment, and from single-party checks to shared industry data. For air-freight exporters, the same declaration discipline will eventually apply.

3. For Business, the Impact Goes Beyond This Shipment and Keeps Going

ü In the past, getting caught on a concealment meant a surcharge, a customs hold or a request for more documents. What is now at stake is your right to be booked. Once the six carriers flag you under the information-sharing mechanism, each of them runs its own risk assessment and can simply turn your cargo away. Being able to secure space is itself a competitive edge, and if you lose it, no change of forwarder gets around it.

ü At home it is carriers policing themselves jointly; internationally it is an industry association pushing a white paper. Within a single week both tracks moved the same way — which says this is no longer about individual companies policing themselves, but about the whole chain establishing a common floor on the truthfulness of declarations.

ü 81% of violations come from concealment. That ratio means the whole industry is paying to guard against a handful of offenders: more inspections, slower handling of false alarms, and delivery times dragged out. The other side of that coin is that manufacturers who can prove their declarations are clean should treat compliance as a bargaining chip rather than something they respond to defensively.

4. Keep Shipping Risk Inside a Range You Can Actually Manage

ü Run your checks before booking, not after. Products with built-in lithium batteries, perfume, aerosols, oxidizers and hazardous chemicals: first confirm whether the goods are dangerous, then decide how to declare them. These are precisely the categories the notice puts on the list.

ü Do not try to solve a restricted cargo category by renaming the product. Carriers now run independent risk assessments, and once you are recorded in the information-sharing mechanism, what you lose is booking access across all six carriers — something no change of forwarder can fix.

ü Make test reports, packaging evidence and the SDS (MSDS) part of your standard shipping process, and keep your own copy alongside the ones you hand the forwarder. When something does go wrong, whether you can produce evidence of a truthful declaration at short notice decides whether you are the party being examined or the party being penalized.