G/TBT/W/753  
 
27 May 2021  
(21-4418) Page: 1/3 
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade  Original: English  
 
PROPOSALS ON ENHANCING PRODUCT SAFETY IN ONLINE SHOPPING  
ENVIRONMENT, AND TRANSPARENCY  
NINTH TRIENNIAL REVIEW  
Submission from the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu  
The following submission, dated  27 May 2021, is being circulated at the request of the delegation of 
the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu . 
 
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1  ENHANCING PRODUCT SAFETY IN ONLINE SHOPPING ENVIRONMENT  
1.1  Background  
1.1.  As COVID -19 pandemic proliferated worldwide, it brought about sudden and wide -ranging 
changes on lifestyle s and consumer behaviors. Border closures, lockdowns and social dist ancing 
measures have led to the rapid growth of online shopping activities. As online shopping may become  
part of the "new normal ," with the growing consumer demand and increased supply of online 
shopping products, it is assumed that the number of unsafe product cases will also increase. A recent 
OECD report  "Protecting online consumers during the COVID -19 crisis " concurred with this 
expectation1. The growth in unsafe product cases, for instance, indicates the need to adjust current 
regulatory regime and re -direct regulatory resources to address this new priority.  
1.2.  The following  features unique to online shopping businesses  cause difficult ies in clarify ing and 
tracing the attribution of legal liability for consumer and government.  
a. The shopping platform operator has multiple roles, being either simple intermediary or the 
direct seller, or in some cases a mixture of both. It is parti cularly confusing when shopping 
takes place over a social media platform instead of a shopping website.  
b. Many individual online sellers are not familiar with products standards and technical 
regulations. They just resell commodities they purchased from some where.  
c. The borderless nature of the internet suggests that the physical location of the 
intermediary platform or the seller cannot be easily identified simply by reviewing the 
language or the currency used in the transaction. In some cases, the platform, o nline 
sellers and the actual manufacturing/delivery of the products are all located in different 
territories. Cross -border online shopping usually takes place without prior knowledge of 
the consumer. Online shopping's multi -stakeholder environment renders it a challenge for 
consumers to determine the appropriate way to seek assistance and recourse to 
authorities in a product incident.  
 
1 "Protecting online consumers during the COVID -19 crisi s", OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus  
(COVID -19), 28 April 2020, http://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy -responses/protecting -online -consumers -
during -the-covid-19-crisis-2ce7353c/   G/TBT/W/753  
 
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  1.3.  There are regulatory challenges as well. The challenge is amplified when products purchased 
online are delivered from a fore ign origin.  
a. In Chinese Taipei 's experience, it is common to discover online -purchased impor ted 
products fail ing to follow conformity assessment procedures as required. Yet as the 
products often arrive in small packages at the border, implementation of border inspection 
on the proper safety marking, labelling and other compliances is increasingly difficult.  
b. The recipient of the imported product is usually the final consumers, who are not, under 
many regulatory regimes, the bearer of legal obligation to file for a border inspection and 
pre-market approval. Consumers normally will not report incidents on non -compliance of 
pre-approval marking or other labeling issues so long if the products function well and 
there are no safety concerns. Even if there are safet y concerns, non -reporting is still 
common for consumers who are aware of the unapproved status of the imported products.  
c. The safety of cross -border online shopping products relies mainly on post -market 
survei llance of the importing Member  and t he multi -stakeholder environment of online 
shopping makes the identification of legal obligators for product safety new task for 
regulators.  
1.4.  The OECD Recommendation on Consumer Product Safety Policy Frameworks2 stated that 
manufacturers, platform operators, sellers and consumers all play important roles in ensuring the 
safety of online shopping products. Areas of attention include consumers' awareness of the safety 
of online shopping products; identify legal compliance of online shopping products, product risk 
assess ment, recall and corrective measures for unsafe products.  
1.2  Recommendations  
1.5.  Chinese Taipei  proposes a thematic session that would share experiences and best practices in 
enhancing online shopping product safety to protect online consumers ' health and safety.  Topics 
could include:  
a. Regulatory experience in product safety of the online shopping environment.  
b. Approaches to enhancing  post-market surveillance mechanism in an online shopping 
environment.  
c. Experiences  and measures in cooperation with all kinds of stakeholders , such as domestic 
competent authorities, online business (platform s and sellers), consumers and foreign 
government s. 
2  TRANSPARENCY  
2.1  Background  
2.1.  Under Article 2.9, 2.10, 5.6 and 5.7 of TBT Agreement, WTO Members are required to notify 
other Members in the event of specified changes to technical regulations, and conformity assessment 
procedures. The purposes of the TBT notifications are to offer Members ex -ante knowledge of 
technical regulations or conf ormity assessment procedures other Members are planning to introduce 
and/or amend. The objectives include reducing potential technical barriers to trade by providing a 
prior opportunity for other Members to assess the impact and identify possible WTO incon sistency 
issues and to allow manufactures and exporters to p repare their products and services for new 
technical requirements in advance.  
2.2.  One of the key elements in achieving the intended objectives of the TBT notification mechanism 
is the participation o f and input from private stakeholders. In Chinese Taipei 's experiences, however, 
lack of meaningful private sector participation has been a persistent challenge. Between 2016 and 
2019, for instance, competence authorities received on average only single -digit comments from the 
 
2 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Consumer Product Safety, OECD/LEGAL/0459, Adopted on: 
17/07/2020.  G/TBT/W/753  
 
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  private sector regarding WTO notification documents. While is it possible that majority of 
notifications do not create material impact on exports, there are other factors that are depriving 
private sector 's interest to engage in the p rocess.  
2.3.  Recent assessment in Chinese Taipei  concludes two impediments in this regard. The first is the 
issue of "information overloading ", i.e. too much information is included in the notification process 
for the private sector to effectively comprehend. Second is the restriction on understanding the 
potential implications on notifications seeking private sector's inputs because important information 
is mission from the notifications.  
2.4.  Against this background, Chinese Taipei  initiated a trial project in 20 20 with the view of better 
matching the trade interest with sector(s) that are more likely to be affected by a specific notification. 
The main assignment of the project is to include a sorting and categorization process to allow the 
authority undertaking a  targeted comment -seeking exercise on most relevant private stakeholders.  
2.5.  Experience from the trial reflects the hindering effect associated with the lack of product 
classification codes, especially the underutilization of the Harmonized Commodity Descript ion and 
Coding System, (Harmonized System or HS code). The WTO TBT Enquiry Point Guide (2017, p. 38) 
reports that only 3 5% of notification uses HS codes, less than the 3 9% that uses ICS codes; 2 6% 
of notifications provides only free text or do not provide any product information at all.  
2.6.  The underutilization of HS code proves to be a major issue due to the fact that trade data from 
most sources is recorded and organized entirely on the HS code system. The omission of 
HS code-based information system makes t rade impact assessment challenging and imprecise. 
Furthermore, the description of the proposed regulation is abstract in many cases and unable to 
pinpoint the group of products or industrial sectors that are affected.   
2.2  Recommendations  
2.7.  In the  Eighth Triennial Review (G/TBT/41 ), Members are encouraged to provi de maximum 
specific information on the products potentially impacted by notified measures. As highlighted in 
Chinese Taipei 's experience, HS Code plays an important role in facilitating, inter alia, the 
identification of commercial and trade interest perta ining to the notified measures. We thus call on 
all Members to give preference in providing corresponding HS codes in the "Products covered " 
column of a notification. Further, we also recommend Members, to the extent possible, to provide 
the legal implicat ion and changes associated with the notified draft regulation, not just the title of 
the new regulation.  
2.8.  There are legitimate and justified reasons for Member not using HS Code in respective 
notifications as well. For instance, the proposed regulation is h orizontal in nature and involves a 
combination of multiple products. In light of the background, Chinese Taipei  proposes, as part of the 
Ninth Triennial Review, to organize thematic workshop on the following topics:  
a. Experiences and challenges  in encouragi ng private sector engagement in TBT notifications.  
b. An update on the approaches the Secretariat (specifically the Central Registry of 
Notifications), has employed in assigning HS/ICS Codes to notifications where both codes 
are absent.  
c. Discussions on the pr ogress of the unofficial correlation table between the HS code and 
ICS code systems developed by the Secretariat, and possible way of collaboration to 
facilitate the work.  
d. Exchange of views on the reasons/difficulties for Members to provide maximum specif ic 
information on the products potentially impacted by notified measures, with special 
emphasis on the challenges of providing HS Code based information.  
e. Discussions on approaches in addressing constrains in adopting HS Code based 
information while accommo dating domestic regulatory objectives and limitations.  
 
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