25 Cross border Trade Facilitation Measures Promoted Nationwide
On January 15th, the reporter learned from the General Administration of Customs that from April to September 2025, the General Administration of Customs, together with 20 departments (units) such as the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Commerce, will carry out a special action on cross-border trade facilitation in 25 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing, achieving positive results and forming a number of good experience and practices. In order to further unleash policy dividends, promote the improvement of foreign trade quality and efficiency, and help achieve a good start to the 15th Five Year Plan, relevant departments have decided to replicate and promote 25 relatively mature policy measures nationwide.
For example, focusing on promoting efficient and smooth cross-border logistics, strengthening the docking between channels and transportation modes, promoting the docking and cooperation between important sea transportation channels such as the "Silk Road Maritime Transport" and cross-border land transportation channels such as the China Europe Railway Express and the Western Land Sea New Corridor, promoting the integration of different cross-border transportation modes, and promoting the construction of logistics channels; To support the development of new business models and formats, we will carry out cross-border mutual recognition of business electronic authentication and electronic signatures, promote cross platform and cross regional authentication interoperability with trusted overseas enterprises, and facilitate the development of cross-border trade business; Focusing on enhancing the effectiveness of benefiting enterprises and the people, supporting the convenient cross-border transportation of agricultural products, and creating more "green channels" for fast customs clearance of agricultural products at ports.
Xie Fang, Deputy Director and First level Inspector of the National Port Management Office of the General Administration of Customs, said that since 2018, the General Administration of Customs, together with relevant departments, has organized and carried out special actions to promote cross-border trade facilitation every year. As of 2024, a total of 115 facilitation measures have been introduced. In 2025, in response to the latest changes in the international trade environment, we will actively respond to the demands of import and export enterprises, benchmark against the international advanced level, and introduce 29 facilitation measures. The central and local governments, as well as government and enterprises, will work together to ensure the stability and quality of foreign trade, "said Xie Fang.
The steady progress of cross-border trade facilitation relies on the joint efforts of regulatory departments at all levels.
With the strong support of the General Administration of Customs and other units, Guangzhou has been a pilot city for seven consecutive years, carrying out special actions for cross-border trade facilitation, launching nearly 200 reform measures, and continuously improving the business environment at the port. "Wei Min, the head of the Guangzhou Port Office, said that in 2025, Guangzhou will leverage the" 9+N "on-site command center mechanism at Baiyun Airport Air Port, work with customs, Civil Aviation Central South Bureau, China Southern Airlines, airports, and related enterprises to implement targeted and precise policies, and vigorously improve the level of air port facilitation through" small incision "reforms, driving the city's foreign trade import and export volume to exceed 1.2 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.4%.
According to Ye Miao, director of the Ningbo Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee, in the field of export control and supervision, Ningbo has innovatively created the "Yongzhi" AI document review intelligent agent, which has completed the full intelligent review application of export declaration forms. With the premise of "good management" and "manageable management", the clearance efficiency has been improved by 30%. At the same time, Ningbo has taken the lead in applying AI technology to customs machine inspection, compressing the average recognition time of intelligent drawing review to 12 seconds and the inspection time to as fast as 4 minutes. Install high-speed image recognition and automatic sampling robots at import ports for iron ore, copper concentrate, etc., and compress the average clearance time by more than 15 hours. Next, Ningbo will make good use of its port as its biggest resource and deepen the construction of smart customs and smart ports
Chang Hui, a second level inspector of the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that cross-border e-commerce is currently the fastest-growing, most promising, and most powerful new form of foreign trade. The Ministry of Commerce will work with relevant departments to strengthen overall coordination, enhance coordination between the central and local governments, promote the implementation and refinement of various work, and promote the healthy and sustainable innovative development of cross-border e-commerce. This year's key tasks include solidly promoting the construction of comprehensive pilot zones, guiding each comprehensive pilot zone to carry out special actions such as regulating the development of cross-border e-commerce and empowering industrial belts, improving the compliance level of enterprises, and actively utilizing cross-border e-commerce to empower local industrial development.