Which countries publish shipment-level vape trade data?
Written from the trade-data question in research/sources-apac.md and the volume-and-price finding in research/sources-china.md, both of which record this as a measured negative.
Last checked 11 October 2026
What does each jurisdiction actually publish?
| Jurisdiction | Granularity confirmed | Company names? |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 9-digit statistical code × partner country × customs office × month | No, and narrow codes are suppressed |
| South Korea | HS 2/4/6/10 × country × customs house × province × month | No |
| Thailand | HS to 11 digits × country × month, with CSV export | No |
| Indonesia | 8-digit tariff line × partner country × month | No |
| Vietnam | HS × partner country, half-monthly | No |
| Mainland China | HS code × province and city of origin × trade mode × month | No |
This is the single most important negative in the research, and it should change expectations rather than be treated as a gap to be filled. There is no Asia-Pacific analogue to US customs bill-of-lading data. Outside the US, the factory-to-importer edge in this region has to be reconstructed from regulatory registries, certification, excise, licensing and intellectual property, rather than read off a manifest. That is a budget and a method difference, not a detail.
Thailand is worth singling out for quality rather than for company names: eleven HS digits, country of origin and destination, monthly back to 2001, free, with CSV export. That is the finest tariff granularity in the region and the best source in it for unit-price work on a single line.
Which jurisdictions suppress data rather than omit it?
Neither of those is an oversight. Both are policy choices to treat a company's trade pattern as a business secret, which is a reasonable position for a regulator and an immovable one for anybody building a graph from manifests.
What does the US side give you?
A bill of lading on the US import side names the shipper, the consignee, the notify party, the product description, the weight, the container count, the port and the date. That is the core link from a Chinese exporter to a US importer, and it is the only record type in this whole chain that gives company-level volume. The free aggregate series under HTS 8543.40 by country and port is the total that manifest data should add up to, which is how a manifest set gets checked for completeness.
Company-level volume therefore comes from the import side even when the question is about a Chinese factory. Chinese commercial trade-data vendors claim exporter and importer names, HS code, price, quantity, origin, destination, date, port and carrier, and industry consensus is that they largely resell the importing country's customs records, which show the Chinese shipper, rather than actual Chinese export declarations. None of them states its provenance.
In this dataset every importer page carries its ports of entry and monthly units, and the aggregate is published once, with one wording, on the import-volume stat page. Two of the 0 importers of record are linked below.
What can you use instead of shipment data?
Three substitutes, in descending order of how close they get.
- Aggregate volume at useful resolution. China's customs query platform publishes HS code against province and city of origin, trade mode and month, which separates general-trade exports from processing trade; a Chinese-language trade publication republishes the same customs data already cut to the ten-digit e-cigarette codes by destination country and month. Dividing value by quantity gives an average export unit price per corridor, not per company, but tight enough to bound a factory price.
- Price without volume, dated and citable. China cancelled the 13% export VAT rebate for 249 products from 1 April 2026, including nicotine non-combustible inhalation products under 2404120000 and other personal vaporisers under 8543400090, with battery products stepping from 9% to 6% for 2026 and to zero on 1 January 2027, and the applicable rate fixed by the export date on the customs declaration. That is a 13-point margin event with a hard date and a code list.
- Capacity and scale instead of volume. Discharge permits, environmental-impact filings and annual-report headcount size a plant; customs advanced certification, provincial export-rebate classification, A-grade taxpayer status and specialised-SME listings rank and qualify companies without publishing a single container or dollar.
The second of those is the most useful single price input found anywhere in this research, because it is a published legal instrument with an effective date and an explicit list of tariff codes, the shape a price record at the factory step actually wants, rather than an estimate.
Questions people ask
- Does any Asian country publish vape shipment records with company names?
- None of the jurisdictions confirmed in this research do. Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and mainland China all publish trade statistics by tariff code and partner country with no company field, and Japan and Korea restrict named records deliberately.
- Can you buy Chinese export declaration data?
- Vendors offer it, and the provenance is unverified. Chinese customs declarations are not public the way US bills of lading are, industry consensus is that these vendors largely resell import-side records from the destination country, and none of them discloses where the data comes from. Demand written provenance before paying for any of it.
- What is the best free source for unit prices on a tariff line?
- Thai Customs' trade statistics: eleven HS digits, country of origin and destination, monthly back to 2001, free, with CSV export. It names no companies, but for average unit value on a single line it is the finest granularity in the region.
Sources
Every register, statute, agency or document the claims above rest on. Reachability notes are measurements taken from a United States vantage point and describe our access, not the standing of the source.
- 財務省貿易統計, 秘匿措置 FAQ (Japan)Items traded by one or two firms are suppressed on application
- กรมศุลกากร สถิติการนำเข้า-ส่งออก (Thai Customs)HS to 11 digits, country and month back to 2001, CSV export, free
- 海关统计数据在线查询平台 (China Customs statistics query)HS × province and city of origin × trade mode × month; aggregate only, no company names
- 财政部/税务总局公告 2026年第2号, export VAT rebate cancellationIssued 8 January 2026; 13% rebate cancelled from 1 April 2026 for 249 products including 2404120000 and 8543400090
- TRASS / 한국무역통계진흥원 (Korea)Named records restricted to a company's own data; company-level products are benchmarks, not shipments
- 腾道 Tendata and other Chinese trade-data vendorsClaim company-level price and quantity; provenance undisclosed and plausibly import-side data resold
Where this guide came from
Written from these passes of the internal source research, so a claim on this page can be traced back to the pass that produced it.
- research/sources-apac.md, The four questions §2, shipment-level data table and suppression notes
- research/sources-china.md, Answers to the three questions §3, volume or price at company level
- research/sources-china.md, Source table items 14, 16, 25