How the Hell can China Ship for Free to your Door??!? 

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How the hell does a nation with a space program, nuclear weapons with delivery mechanisms, high speed rail, and is likely the second largest economy considered a "developing" nation?

The problem is that if you buy something from your local store all they do is buy it from China and overcharge you

One experience i had is that i needed a very niche and specific cable which cost $1 on Aliexpress and all sellers on Ebay and Amazon (who probably procured the product from Aliexpress) were selling it for upwards of $10. In a situation like this I can't find a way to justify paying 10 times more for the exact same product when China wins either way.

I'm endeavouring to avoid all Chinese made products, but it's almost impossible due to companies not being made to be totally transparent.

What makes me mad is the lies. I have friends in Africa, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and others, and they tell me that sending something to China costs a fortune, but getting something from China is incredibly cheap. So while they say this is to help developing nations it's actually a lie, try and get someone to send a package from an African nation to China and see how much it costs. There something else going on here, and it has nothing to do with "developing nation" status. They're lying about this.

I was an EBAY seller of Sterling silver bracelet beads and did this for eleven years. I was just a small-time seller, but managed to keep my head above water until the Chinese sellers entered the market, selling the beads at an impossible price. 1. Counterfeit merchandise, hallmarked as solid sterling, but just silver plated and 2. free shipping that costs Chinese vendors nothing. It became impossible for me to continue because I could not compete under those conditions.

True. A dashcam from USA (that's listed as Made In China) was $45, shipping $15, plus sales tax of $2.75. The exact same dashcam from China was $8.73 with free shipping and no sales tax. So I have a choice of paying $8.73 or $62.75? That's not really a choice, $54 is a tank of gas now

This whole postage situation is ridiculous. I'm selling things on eBay, and it's just impossible to compete with China. Just the postage alone costs me more than stuff delivered from damn china. The last mile delivery is the most expensive part and the USPS eats all the costs and raises postage prices for US citizens. I'm really sick of this.

This is a much bigger problem than anyone realizes, but Amazon has benefitted from this loophole just as much as TEMU. Tons of listings on Amazon ship strait from China. Most of this stuff infringes our patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

I remember watching a news program a few years ago about a family in the US that invented an excellent rat trap. They had it patented at considerable cost and they started producing it in their garage, but as sales increased they had to rent a small factory. Sales continued to increase, then all of a sudden their sales dropped considerably. On investigation they found a Chinese company had made a direct copy of their rat trap and were selling to the USA at around 25% of their price, mainly due to their reduced shipping cost from China to the USA. The small family business soon went out of business as they could not afford to enforce their patent in China and prevent the rat trap being sold into the USA.

I don't buy junk products from china... But now I'm gonna be seriously diligent about not supporting them at any cost. I'll spend the extra money to support my country.

This is probably one of the most important videos ever posted on RU-vid. It easily summarises both the geopolitical and economical entanglements that rule the world and that directly affect our daily life. Watching and sharing this video is a civic duty Hats off to @serpentza

I was in SE Asia manufacturing machinery. My American CEO wanted to sell to China. I didn't like it as I knew they would strip our product and reverse engineer it and copy it! We had spent a lot of design and engineering time on the units we were wanting to sell. It was a market leader. We obtained patents for our products. I still advised the CEO against sending units to China. Well guess what, we did send units and shortly the Chinese were trying to sell to our customers! The CEO left the company afterwards!

Wow, ... I never realized that our US postal service was getting bled dry financially by having to handle the countless tens of millions of packages from China !

We as Americans need to hold our lawmakers accountable for letting these legal loopholes stay open, and take action to cutting support to them to force them to close these loopholes, and placing China’s economic status correctly!

I found a couple of chairs via Etsy for $200 but the cost of shipping was $250 from Florida to Delaware… our Giverments kept telling us “we cannot compete with with Chinese Labor” but the fact is WHO can compete when the TAX PAYER picks up the shipping from Shanghai to your door!

Paid $22 to ship a small item 1/2 inch wide and 4 inches long in a padded envelope from Canada to the USA. Took 3 weeks to get to the destination. At the same time I bought a diesel heater that weighs 40kg from china and it was free shipping, took 3 weeks to get from China to Canada. The game is rigged.

I always wondered how i could buy fully working electronic circuit boards from China for less than i can send an empty envelope across my country.

Many times buying on Amazon you actually buy directly from sellers located in China (Amazon marketplace). So you pay 5x the price, but the package is shipped from China anyway, using the same loophole you mentioned.

We should reverse the subsidy so it’s cheaper to ship within your own country. The issue is that Amazon sells the exact same products as Temu but at a markup, and with a yearly member cost

I make à point to never use products that are made or are from China I'm an electronic technician and sometimes my customers are annoyed because the parts cost à little more BUT when I explain why I do this and why I only put high quality parts in their devices, they are happy to pay a little more to have high quality parts from Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and India in their expensive devices. (I repair and restore high-end sound systems and amplifiers, from 1000$ to 50K$ of markets value) I give them 2 years of guarantee on the work AND parts. I do this since the lates 80's and never had to re-do a job because of defective parts or anything else for that matter.

As someone in the USA who has been directly affected by recession after recession after recession, I am forced to wonder; why the hell are we still subsidizing these other countries?

This should be shown to every child, every teenager as part of their education on life. We're in a greedy selfish world, and the Chinese government is taking advantage of it. Wonderful explanation Winston.

😂 that's why Indian government banned maximum Chinese apps. Put maximum tax on Chinese products.

You are right, I get bombarded daily by these Temu junk ads. They should regulate and put a brake on it. So irritating. Thanks for bringing this up.

I worked in a UPS store for far too long. I’ve always wondered how they could possibly ship a product from china for $5 total let alone $5 shipping. We would quote shipping a package to china and it would never be less than $150.

Thank you for saying what I have been thinking for over 20 years. I work with a lot of people from China, they've worked so hard and paid tens of thousands of dollars to live the kind of life I was granted by circumstance. It makes me so mad even their hard earned dollars often go back home where some of them barely escaped alive. It's actually not hard to buy local in Australia. When I was on minimum wage (pre aged care mandatory wage increase) I'd at times buy a few extra tshirts online, but now I'm a couple hundred bucks more comfortable per fortnight I save up and choose wisely. Never trusted shein or temu purely because of how much they push their ads. Don't tell me what to do or what to buy, thanks! I'll get it when I need it. I just wish people waited until they needed things, even a tad more often. Above all, think of the bloody landfill. It's disgusting. Where I live, our recycling rubbish is not even being recycled.

I've been trying to explain this to people around me for a long time, but apparently money outweighs morals. They say I exaggerate. They also don't understand the fact that they pay for the shipping themselves, or they don't want to understand it because they want that junk so badly.

That was extremely well put. It's a very important issue. We all need to stop buying junk from China.

Sold something small on ebay and had to pay 17€ shipping fee to send from one EU country to the next. By postal rule, any non-document for the past years has to be labled as package, no matter how small it is. I was deeply upset, that I am punished like this, when I decide to trade with someone within the EU-zone, the place where we should have better deals and work together. Meanwhile I can get anything from alibaba getting shipped for almost free. This was the last time I sold something to a foreign country, it's just too expensive.

I ordered stuff from Temu because I couldnt believe how cheap it was. You hear about how bad Amazon is all over in the West, but this has made me rethink using them

A few months ago I ordered a kitchen tool from TEMU that was said to be a fruit juice squeezer. It looked like a potato masher with a bowl large enough to place an orange in, and a handle with a masher to squeeze the juice out. The picture showed it as silver gray and looked like it was made of stainless steel. The price was very low with free shipping, and would have cost me $18.00 at Walmart, not counting tax. I was so pleased with the price that I immediately went to my payment account and ordered. The package arrived 2 weeks later and I could hardly ait to open it. The item was made of light green plastic with a handle that broke the first time I used it. It was a piece of junk. I will never buy anything coming directly from China again since there is no way to send it back, plus the cost of shipping, and I would never get a refund. That was my first and last time dealing with China.

Small business owner here in Canada that manufactures electonics and ships directly to their customers. Winston's assessment of the situation is 100% correct. We are willingly exploiting local and Chinese workers by buying their cheaply made stuff from literal sweatshops, and subsidising their unfair trade practices. Lucky for us we stll have an amazing and very loyal customer base. Thank you for making this video!.

Chinas manufacturing economy would collapse if we had to pay true freight cost.

Bloody hell, been asking myself this question multiple times. Thanks for the answer now.

I wish more people would hurry up and realize this Winston. Keep spreading the word brother👍.

I paid about $5 postage for something from Hong Kong, it cost $42 in US postage to send it back for warranty repair!

So glad you covered this topic 👍👍👍 thank you 😁

My wife bought me a pack of green pickleballs from Temu as part of a Xmas gift. The pickleballs were not even close to regulation size and dexterity. They were unplayable because the softness stunted the ball’s bounce. They were totally useless. That’s straight up fraud. It was a sham product.

The thing is, a lot of stuff that sells in local shops, is also just stuff from China, just much more expensive. I'm all for supporting local shops and better quality, I'd be so willing to pay more for long lasting quality products, but I slowly realized, the stuff they sell in the shops, is the same stuff that you can order from China via eBay or Amazon, but it's way cheaper there.

US Postal Inspectors arrested a couple (in the USA) committing postal fraud: used fake postage within the USA to subsidize those free postage-packages. They ALONE cost the US millions of dollars 😞

I've never bought off Temu and such, but unfortunately I have to admit there are things (mainly stationery and organizing items) that are otherwise not available anywhere else in your country, let alone at a cheap price. Also, when available, the same items on amazon - though still coming from China - cost 3 or 4 times the price, so I can see why someone would decide to go that way. Same things goes for local small businesses that buy in bulk from the same Chinese producers and sell for 4 or 5 times the price. I avoid buying both, but sometimes you just get pissed thet you get the very same item of clothing at 40€, sold as one of a kind selected fashion that's on Shein for 15 or Temu for 8.

Aliexpress used to have "predominantly" free shipping (To Canada)... now, its harder to find free now. So I am not sure if China is just starting to charge more (to increase profits), or if our postal service has stopped subsidizing Chinese shipments. I found this comment from 2017 when the problem got way worse in Canada: "CANADA POST is sitting on thousands of containers and trailers are piled up at every major CPC processing plant. They say they make no money from delivering the tiny packets and parcels they get from China."

I am an American living in Germany and I have noticed that shippers from China have several advantages over nearer-shore shippers when I have stuff sent to my German residence. One such is that all of the shipping labels have no visible handling mark or postage franking on the envelope; usually, the shipper is someone in China yet the item came from someone in the same country I'm (or another EU) country ... often without a postal Customs Declaration CN-22 form attached. On the other hand, if I order something from Switzerland over a certain amount, Deutsche Post will immediately want to tack on 15% import tax on items valued declared over CHF100 in Euros plus an additional €7.00 administrative cost for handling. How is that fair? 😕

Wow, thank you for sharing this. It's an eye opener

I really love to see how honest you are. I'm a new follower and enjoying your videos. Thanks Winston. You have opened my eyes and my mind about China. Keep up the good work and your honestly. 🙂👍

Companies like Temu also do not pay tariff if the order is under $800 (another loophole), which is 99.99% of the order. Importers like Walmart, Target, Amazon and etc have to pay tariff. Temu will even put them out of business at this rate. Many will lose jobs and US retailer will lose b/c of our OWN doing. It is ridiculous that our government is allowing this.

You and laowhy are the best. I really appreciate your work.

I am living in the EU. Once, when I came to work I realised that I left some power cable in my car that was about 10 min away. I estimated that buying a new one from China with delivery would be cheaper for my company than asking me to come back for it. Life is unfair.

I have adamantly refused to buy anything from Temu or any other direct sales company from China. It’s impossible to not buy Chinese made products but I try to find a alternate whenever possible. It’s not that hard to at least try. Keep spreading the word.

I work at a usps mail processing facility and we get Temu by the literal truckload. It’s been overwhelming our mail processing machines since November

That is why whenever we go to Dollar Tree, we check the tag to see if it's made in China, if it's made in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, or Taiwan, it's alright, but not China.

I recall shipping free shopping from all around the world until the pandemic. Wealth was changed from one to another in a moment as it suddenly began costing $49.90 postage per screw.

Sara AI is from my home country, Thailand. It's a comedic take on the current state of technology. Not an actual ai just so if anyone curious

In Sweden, they solved the "problem" with cheap junk from China with a special fee (tax) of $8-15. The problem is that this tax applies to the whole world except the EU, so if any developing country needs help with the postal fees... it is also ruined.

I have a few friends who got undercut and really had to just use local buyer's to keep afloat then lockdown and lost everything 👍well done my friend for shining it a bit for folk

Love your work man!

Thank you, I learned alot from your insight.

This is sickening. We're helping them and now they want to ruin us.

Incredibly insightful. Often wondered about this. You did not even mention the environmental damage these products cause.... Container transport and plastics/toxic contamination.

Great video, I hope more people see this.

I think Sweden (and perhaps other European nations) removed China as postal exemptions around 5-6 years ago. I remember Swedes could order single electronic components (resistors etc) for around USD 5-10 cents in total back then. Absolutely insane

I bought a $1.21 pencil sharpener from the big "A" (that turned out to be really good) shipped to me from China for free. I was surprised too. Took about 2 weeks to get, but I got it and it is great. It also cost me $90.00 US dollars to send a shoe box size package to my relatives in China two months ago. I get it.

Our gov't / taxes need to support our USPS so much more. :( They often get such a raw deal but they are such a blessing and NEED of a public service.

What an excellent explanation! I had heard the murmurs of the Finnish Postal Service that were publicised in the media at some point, but I didn't understand the mechanism behind it. Of course, we too have this issue of high costs vs. not being compensated. Especially since this country is ludicrously sparsely populated, and the postal service is still expected to get the work done. It'll cost me around 7-9 euro to mail, say, two or three disc golf discs - very small package weighting from 350 to 560 grams - across the capital region like 30 km away.

In the US, I try to buy domestically all the time. But there are certain useful items that I can only get from China. Domestic businesses can make the same items, but choose not to because they could never turn a profit. Unfortunate that these subsidies for free shipping adds fuel to that fire.

This is terrible! You did a really great job, thanks a lot for sharing！👍😄👏

This video needs to be shared far and wide.

The fact that this guy is doing my country’s money managing for them you really know we are in trouble, our entire country is asleep at the wheel. It’s truly amazing to be alive during this empires fall. Make sure you all check out the movie Don’t Look Up : )

Frightening. And eye opening. I mean, of course it makes sense. Its something you KNOW you know, but you don't really think about it. Absolutely sharing this with family members and friends.

This is a huge problem. Thank you for covering it.

I love your videos you answer questions that would probably take me hours of research on the Internet you answer all the curiosity I’ve ever had all your videos are dope thank you so much

I once bought a decal set for my phone which came in 4 layers of packaging; I'm guess one at manufacturing level, one at wholesale and two at retail. Well, 2 years later I bought the exact same item which this time came in 8 layers of packaging and I could not fathom why such an amount was used. It seems to me China are also uploading huge amounts of unnecessary plastic onto us which we then possibly sell back to them as rubbish. Just thought I'd put that in there.

Once I worked in a big warehouse that got shipments of cheap junk from China every single day. When unloading the containers we always had to sort out tons of wares that have been broken (or entirely destroyed in case of glassware) during transit. So about only two thirds of every shipment went into storage, the rest went right to the dump yard. I always wondered how any company can order broken trash and have it shipped around the world and still make a profit. Now I know.

I strongly agree with you that Temu and similar companies are selling tons of junk that's totally unnecessary and downright wasteful, but I purchased some things from Temu because I can't afford to buy much locally. As important as it is to be aware of what companies are doing, I think it's really important to acknowledge the limited options the average consumer has, this vicious cycle has most people stuck with no options aside from fast-fashion and cheap imports because we can't afford to buy locally. The blame lies with the inspectors and lawmakers and whoever else is in charge of regulating these things! I've spent so much time cleaning and sorting my recycling only to find out there aren't enough recycling plants to handle the job, so full truckloads go to landfill, I worked at McDonald's and the "recycling" bins all went to the same garbage compactor. Corporations should be held accountable BEFORE the consumer

If its free, you're the product!

Absolutely love serpentza !! Been watching for quite awhile not god bless and take care

Your channel is priceless. It brings essential info for everyone. And ur patriotic sense explained crystal clearly is highly appreciated. Thumbs up

It’s nice hearing from someone who actually spent time on the ground, learning the Chinese culture. Americans are fed a bunch of nonsense from our media propaganda machine. Thank you for your efforts, greatly appreciated!

In UK we pay more shipping sometimes than the actual product, but returning is free from" Wish". Few years ago I bought a tablet for £50. It was very poor quality and it had 1 dead pixel in the middle. When I wanted to return it they told me to keep it and refunded me.

I had no idea, I always thought dollars and euros were worth a lot more to them so it was worthwhile to ship even for free. Thanks.

I bought a Car Tyre inflator (Pump) from Temu about 6 months ago for £1.79 thinking it seems way too cheap. Well i received a rechargeable cordless drill shaped Car Tyre pump complete with Charger in less than 4 days. It works brilliant and even has a digital pressure guage and automatic cut off when the Tyre pressure reaches the correct pressure. I took it apart out of curiosity mainly to see what type of motor and battery it had ? The battery is a bunch of Panasonic 18650s with a brushless motor and it all looks very well made especially for £1.79 delivered. Incidentally we have to pay £1 to use the Air pump at the garages her in UK 🇬🇧. So after checking Tyre pressure twice I've actually made a profit of £1 a week.😊😉

This is making my blood boil. How can the world continue with the subsidies to China, especially today when the anit-CCP sentiment is at all time high?!

Good message, Winston! This is the time we should be cutting down on buying useless tat, that will inevitably end up in a land fill, or in the ocean.

I have been working in the shipping business more than 30 years, and let me tell you how this is possible. China to USA by ocean freight, USD 2500 for 68 cubic metres (capacity of one 40'HQ container), so USD 36 per cubic metre. For the small item in your video, let's say the package is 10cm*10cm, which is 0.01 cubic metre. So the shipping charge for each package is 0.01 * 36 = USD 0.36. You can get lower shipping price if you ship 10 containers like this. Another example, a litre of gasoline shipping from Texas USA to Ningbo China, the shipping fee is USD 0.01 per litre.

The same thing is happening in Brazil too. The Brazilian government normally taxes all imports valued at more than US$50 by around 60% but for products arriving from China they turn a blind eye.

You are so right about the nightmare it is to return stuff to China. I bought a dress for a wedding from Amazon not realizing it was from a chinese company. The dress arrived damaged albeit during transport but still it wasn't wearable. I tried getting a return label since free returns was advertised. I kept receiving non valid return labels. It cost $12.99 shipping to me. But in order to return it via UPS it would have cost me $28. I finally told them to send me a valid return label or I was going to file a complaint with the company. The dress had burn marks on the dress and was going to be trashed when they received it. I was finally issued a refund and was told that I didn't need to return the dress. Lesson learned to check where the origin of the company prior to placing an order.

As someone who has extensively researched the postal industry, I have to point out that your video contains a lot of incorrect and outdated information. The subsidised shipping rates you're referencing are referred to as terminal dues. Terminal dues are never free (for obvious reasons) and are only subsidised for developing countries. The UPU does not allow its members to self-declare their economic status (as you've implied) to benefit from cheaper terminal dues. The economic status for member countries is based on two things - their GDP and their Human Development Index (HDI). This doesn't mean to say this is always a fair representation of their actual economic status. Additionally, you failed to point out that the trump administration already took action to stop China from benefiting from subsidised terminal dues when he threatened to leave the UPU. This prompted an emergency meeting and forced the UPU to make changes (which was definitely a good thing for the American tax payer). Countries with high international shipment volumes, such as the USA, can now self declare there own terminal due rates. With this change, the Trump administration agreed to remain a member of the UPU. One last point - there is no such thing a "free" shipping for e-commerce companies - even before the aforementioned changes to the UPU took place. Companies like Temu have to ship its parcels via China Post to receive any subsidised terminal dues (if any) as China Post is the designated operator (DO) for China. And China Post does not allow companies like Temu to ship for free. If China Post did that, it would come at the cost of the Chinese tax payer. Additionally, once China post has processed a parcel, they then need to pay for a company for the airfreight or sea-freight. The cost for this is not footed by the American tax payer. China's postal system is highly advanced, with automation that provides a significant advantage in terms of economies of scale. This, combined with low labor costs and a relatively less stringent regulatory environment, has enabled China to offer cost-competitive shipping solutions.

What an incredible and informative video. It’s very much appreciated. Keep up the good work 👍

Thank you! I had no idea about that subsidy. Will be spreading this info.

Reverse flow logistics can be surprisingly cost effective, and can depend more on the cost of returning containers; empty vs. full.

i don't even recall how i found you, but i'm very grateful for your truly surprising, if not different perspective or insight on something interesting and relevant if not important. thanks for keeping your drive in producing your videos!

I have wondered this for years, how China sends things to us at low cost shipping this needs to be brought up at the government level. No wonder our manufacturing is so low. I would love to see you talk about this on The Jimmy Dore Show or the Joe Rogan experience. This is so important for out economy and security.

Thanks for this video . ❤

Thank you for this!

Well nothing is free. You pay for it one way or the other, Amazon does it too

If you do order anything and it arrives defective, always claim it never arrived. The thing with this free shipping is that it is not tracked. This will force them to refund you or send another item. Otherwise they will ask you to return the item, knowing full well it will cost you 3x the amount you paid for it to do so.

Simply thanks for your video. Wasn't even aware how they get their penny articles to us. Best regards from Germany 🇩🇪

the irony is that under this video most of the space is occupied by this giant temu ad! "2.4 ghz rc-car only 2$ for new users" 😂