Importing from China into the US: the CPSC rules, with the data
CPSC eFiling for China-to-US importers: who certifies, the 341 CPSC-accepted laboratories in mainland China by city, what CPSC's violation and recall records show about China-made goods, and what to get from your supplier.
Last checked: 2026-09-22 · Source: CPSC laboratory list CPSC, Notices of Violation CPSC and the CPSC recall API CPSC / SaferProducts.gov Rec · Licence: CC BY 4.0
Everything CPSC requires of a US importer applies to goods made in China, and the importer, not the Chinese factory, is the party that must certify. The practical differences are scale and scrutiny: 341 of CPSC's 737 accepted third-party testing laboratories are in mainland China (46.3%), 27,510 of the 39,928 violative samples in CPSC's Notices of Violation file are China-origin (68.9%), and 1,976 of 3,374 recalls since 2016 were of China-made products (58.6%). Sources (4)CPSCCPSC: List of CPSC-accepted testing laboratoriesCPSCCPSC: Notices of Violation (Excel, updated 20 Aug 2026)CPSC / SaferProducts.gov RecCPSC / SaferProducts.gov Recalls APIFederal Register: CertificatFederal Register: Certificates of Compliance, 90 FR 1800 (8 Jan 2025)
Who certifies: you, not your factory
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in China-to-US sourcing. For an imported finished product, the party that must issue and keep the certificate is the importer, defined by CPSC as the party eligible to make entry: owner, purchaser, consignee or authorised customs broker. A Chinese manufacturer may arrange the testing, may draft the document and may put its name on it, but it does not discharge your obligation. If the certificate is wrong, CPSC comes to the importer.
What the factory can legitimately do: book the testing at a CPSC-accepted laboratory, hand you the test reports, and tell you the true date and place of manufacture. What you must do: hold the certificate, keep the records, and make sure the data reaches your broker at entry.
Detail: CPC or GCC? · does every SKU need its own certificate?
CPSC-accepted laboratories in China
341 of CPSC's 737 accepted laboratories are in mainland China. Where they are:
| City | Accepted laboratories | Share of China |
|---|---|---|
| Shenzhen | 84 | 24.6% |
| Dongguan | 48 | 14.1% |
| Shanghai | 36 | 10.6% |
| Guangzhou | 29 | 8.5% |
| Ningbo | 20 | 5.9% |
| Hangzhou | 13 | 3.8% |
| Foshan | 9 | 2.6% |
| Qingdao | 8 | 2.3% |
| Shaoxing | 8 | 2.3% |
| Quanzhou | 6 | 1.8% |
| Yiwu | 6 | 1.8% |
| Suzhou | 6 | 1.8% |
| Tianjin | 5 | 1.5% |
| Xiamen | 5 | 1.5% |
| Huizhou | 5 | 1.5% |
| Other cities | 53 | 15.5% |
Hong Kong is listed separately by CPSC, with 16 accepted laboratories. The full list, with laboratory type and accreditation body, is the labs dataset.
What actually gets stopped
CPSC's own enforcement records, by hazard, for China-made products.
| Hazard | Recalls of China-made products, 2016 to 2026 |
|---|---|
| Fall / general injury | 823 |
| Fire / burn | 655 |
| Poisoning / lead / chemical | 239 |
| Choking | 183 |
| Tip-over / entrapment | 177 |
| Laceration / amputation | 132 |
| Suffocation / strangulation | 124 |
| Battery / ingestion of magnets or batteries | 104 |
In 2026 so far, 356 of 448 recalls were of China-made products, and 266 of them named Amazon as a sales channel. Full breakdowns: recalls dataset and violations dataset.
What to get from your supplier, before the goods ship
- Test reports from a CPSC-accepted laboratory, naming the laboratory and the rules tested. Check the laboratory against CPSC's list and check the scope.
- The true date and place of manufacture (city and country), per production run. Both are eFiled data elements.
- The date the product was tested, which is not the date of the report.
- Notice of any material change. A change of material, component supplier or process requires re-testing and a new certificate version.
- Tracking label information for children's products: the marking is a statutory duty under CPSA section 14(a)(5).
The dates that apply to your shipments
- 8 July 2026: eFiling mandatory for regulated imports.
- 22 October 2026: mandatory for international mail, which must file CBP Entry Type 13. This one catches China direct-to-consumer shipping hard.
- 8 January 2027: goods entered from a Foreign Trade Zone.
Sourced, with the Federal Register citation for each: deadlines dataset.
Founder of ComplyGoods. Publishes open data on product-compliance regimes (also eprfrancerep.com and eprgermanyrep.com). Every figure here links to the government file or provider page it was read from.
Razvan Toma on LinkedIn ↗Importing consumer products into the US?
Certificate data is now filed with every entry. Check which CPSC rules your product falls under, then keep every product's certificate data complete, current and provable.