The last few times I traveled to China, I had some spare 18650s with me. Some were Xtar protected cells (Panasonic NCR18650B rewraps) and others were bare Samsung 30Q’s.
At the airport within China, they inspected my batteries and were ok with the Xtar cells, but had me discard/mail the 30Q’s because they did not have the type, voltage, and capacity explicitly printed on the pink wrapper. Apparently they require this information to be printed by the manufacturer on all spare cells you carry, otherwise they consider the cells unidentifiable/dangerous.
Did anyone here run into this sort of problem with non-rewrapped cells when traveling, in any country? What was your solution?
I’m not sure what they’re enforcing at the airport but China has a 2024 law requiring the CCC mark on lithium batteries and power Banks sold and transported in country. It stands for China Compulsory Certification. It means it has passed a series of tests laid out in some certification standard that they’ve adopted.
So to get around it I would recommend carrying an additional flashlight or 3 with type C port to recharge things.
Or you have to buy new cells. It looks like Eve is putting the mark on most of their cells now but companies outside of China probably aren’t real keen on doing that.
Thank you very much for this information! I am not up to date on this. The cells you showed do have Ah /Wh ratings, and should hopefully be ok. Luckily, my old cells are wearing out and I plan to get a bunch of new cells, all of which are from Chinese manufacturers.
Do you think the “CCC” at the end of the Molicel P28A label stands for this certification?
There are a few caveats. First of all I’m not fully up to speed on this. My understanding is:
If the batteries are being manufactured to ship outside of the country then they don’t have to bear that Mark and I believe they don’t technically have to pass that certification. But apparently some or most manufacturers just make sure everything’s going to pass that standard and put the mark on everything because some of the product may end up in devices in China. But the other thing is when they first start a batch and it hasn’t been tested yet you may have stock images of a battery before it has passed the tests and those images may be of some of those first test batches.
So if you want the Mark you may need to ask the retailer where you’re going to buy them if the Mark is on there.
Apparently there are also other carve outs. If the batteries are manufactured for industrial or medical or specialized equipment they don’t need that CCC mark. They are still required to go through other rigorous testing procedures. But they’re not necessarily manufactured for portable consumer use. So batteries with 50 amp CDR aren’t designed for portable consumer use. So I guess as long as they have all the other information that you specified above, the airport maybe okay with it.
I don’t know.
Ahh I see, thank you for pointing out the issues with intended consumer, engineering sample and other batch variations. Quite a tricky situation. I guess I’ll stick with bringing cells that are known to have printed ratings and CCC sign, next time I travel to China.
Apparently that CCC Mark is strictly enforced as of June of 2025 at the airports. For carry on, it’s likely they will even pull the battery out of a flashlight to inspect it.
Oof that is bad news, I think all the Sofirn/Wurkkos cells don’t have the CCC mark, so one cannot travel with them. I haven’t had batteries pulled out of their lights when I was last in China (2024), but things seem to have changed a lot since then.
I personally support their efforts to try and get batteries and associated devices to adhere to some safety standards. Obviously things can be gamed or falsified but I for one wouldn’t want to be on a plane where someone has dodgy batteries as part of the baggage.
I support the idea behind the effort, but it remains to see how effective the implementation is.
Prior to the CCC requirement, they rejected my 30Q’s but would have let through Ultrofite 9900mAh 18650’s, because the latter has a printed voltage and capacity rating. No doubt that Ultrofite can print an additional CCC on the wrapper if they choose.
Yeap that’s one of the reasons I mentioned that things can be gamed or falsified. Plus I suspect that fake battery wrappings can be easily printed by people.
Imperfect as it is the thoughts of a battery or device going rogue on a plane doesn’t give me happy thoughts
It looks like individual cells are in a gray area at the airport and they may be looking for the CCC Mark or they may just look at the numbers. The Civil Aviation Administration of China “airport law” only specifies power Banks require the CCC mark.
So it may be different at different airports.
The law requiring the CCC label applies to individual cells and power Banks and ebike components and various other lithium-ion batteries including those going into cell phones.
All newly certified items after March 1st 2026 will also have to add a QR code that will take you to the certification specs and info.
Any items that were previously certified will have to add the QR code before March 1st of 2027.
Stickers are not allowed. Re-wrappers, the way I understand it, can’t simply add this CCC Mark and the QR code because they are not the original company that went through the testing procedure and applied their name/label.
I think the biggest problem is different countries or regions having their own specific Mark or certification standards.
I’ve read up on a few reddit threads, and indeed there seems to be some ambiguity on whether the CCC requirement applies to spare cells. It is clearly known to apply to power banks. The boundary between flashlights and powerbanks is also a bit blurry with lights like Sofirn Q8+…
This could be a serious problem because it immediately rules out re-wrapped cells–no Vapcells or Xtars. But most original cells tend to be missing the voltage or capacity rating, so they are out as well. There exist not many cells that come directly from the manufacturer with all the relevant info printed.
Even the EVE 35V you photographed above won’t be let through because it doesn’t have a voltage rating printed, as completely obvious as it is.
Yeah I’ve also read some of those first-hand accounts on Reddit and a few other places and it sounds like even with a power bank they just want to see that CCC label.
And I wonder how many rewrapped cells are sold to consumers in China.
