China Tightens Oversight Across Fireworks Production, Logistics, and Sales

The General Office of the State Council has issued comprehensive guidelines to tighten safety oversight across China's entire fireworks supply chain, spanning production, storage, retail, transit, and discharge. According to official notices published by Xinhua and government portals, the directive strictly caps the number of manufacturers, targets erratic products such as sky-rockets and ground poppers for phase-out, and prohibits hazardous non-firework explosives. Regulators are also cracking down on illicit interprovincial shipments of raw materials and banning pyrotechnics from standard parcel logistics and regular freight channels.

The policy establishes a unified national baseline that will accelerate consolidation across China's massive pyrotechnics sector, pushing sub-scale or manual workshops out of the market through compulsory safety standards and automation benchmarks. By delineating clear jurisdictional responsibilities across public security, emergency management, and transport bodies, the central government aims to curb fatal industrial blasts while establishing structured legal frameworks for local holiday sales and designated fireworks displays.

China's State Council General Office has released a comprehensive policy circular mandating heightened safety supervision across every stage of the fireworks and firecracker sector, according to state media and official government notices. The directive, formalised as State Council General Office Document No. 26 of 2026, sets binding requirements across manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, logistics, and end-user discharge. In the manufacturing sector, local authorities are instructed to tightly cap the overall number of fireworks producers and enforce rigorous licensing screening, barring any operation that fails statutory safety standards or conflicts with regional industrial planning. Under the guidelines, the government will release an official catalogue of phased-out manufacturing techniques, obsolete equipment, and banned chemical formulations. Regulators are accelerating the elimination of pyrotechnic products with erratic or uncontrollable trajectories, such as ground-impact snaps, friction-sensitive poppers, and aerial sky-rockets. The circular explicitly prohibits the production of non-firework hazardous munitions, including bird-repelling charges, torpedoes, and smoke canisters, while banning subcontracted or outsourced toll manufacturing. Upstream materials and volatile semi-finished goods face heightened controls. Black powder, safety fuses, and decommissioned propellant powders are barred in principle from cross-provincial road transport. Fireworks makers are strictly prohibited from reselling bare pyrotechnic compounds, propellants, fuses, or explosive precursors to third parties. The document also outlaws the use of primary initiating explosives, such as azides and hydrazine salts, and prohibits retail purchases of explosive precursors by private individuals. In the storage and logistics phases, enterprise warehouses—including transit hubs and chemical depots—must adhere to strict separation rules to prevent the co-storage of oxidizers and reducing agents. For transport, authorities must tighten highway transit permits and eliminate the unlawful shipment of pyrotechnics via ordinary freight lines or parcel express couriers. For consumer discharge, the circular urges regional governments to devise balanced, evidence-based local policies for public fireworks use rather than applying arbitrary measures, while mandating strict security for large-scale municipal displays. Oversight bodies are instructed to enhance joint administrative and criminal enforcement to trace illicit supply chains and hold corporate executives accountable.