Data sources of the RESSET Customs Trade, Import and Export Database are General Administration of Customs, the local Customs Branch, National Bureau of Statistics, the local Bureau of Statistics, CBR Business Research Bureau and other authoritative institutions. The database is integrally designed through a empirical-research oriented idea, by a number of experts from domestic and international renowned universities and research institutions in whole period, fully referring to the design standards of international famous databases, but also involving the actual conditions of Chinese customs import and export data. The design ideas, system structure, data quality, and technology pattern have all reached international advanced level, which can provide strong support to empirical research, discipline and laboratory construction. Customs data show import and export trading information of various countries and customs bill of lading data of various countries and areas, through deeply mining of which, it can help companies grasp the market trends in a timely, comprehensive, and visible way and help them analyze the foreign market business.

Customs data are statistics data in various items, produced when customs fulfill the functions of import and export trade statistics. Customs statistics is the statistics that customs do legally on import and export commodities, is a component of national economic statistics, is the significant basis when the country formulate the international economics and trade policy and adjust macroeconomics, is the important materials of studying China’s development of international economics and trade as well as international economics and trade relations. The responsibility of customs statistics is to survey, analyze and supervise import and export commodities, to supervise and alarm import and export, to formulate, manage and publish customs statistics materials and to provide statistics services.

Customs statistics items are the basic components of statistics indicator system, are decretory collecting indicators of import and export statistics data. Customs Statistics Ordinance formulate that statistics items about import and export commodities include: name, code, quantity, price, business units, trading method, transportation method, origin country (region) of imported goods, departure country (region), domestic destination, the final destination country (region) of exported goods, destination country (region), domestic origin of goods, import and export dates, which gate and other items regulated by General Administration of Customs. Items above can be adjusted by General Administration of Customs according to the needs of national economic development and customs supervision.