Fresh measures herald gains on RCEP, ASEAN fronts, and better operations

China's latest efforts to strengthen the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor will boost the country's trade with fellow signatory countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement and expand interactions with other trade partners across the world, Customs officials said on Friday.

On Friday, the General Administration of Customs unveiled 15 policy measures. One of its goals is to further foster smoother and more efficient trade routes that now connect China's western regions with key seaports and rail transportation hubs in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

Another goal is to assist Chinese exporters in expanding their global presence, streamlining Customs clearance procedures and cargo transportation processes, and upgrading the service offerings within the comprehensive bonded zones in western China.

The administration will better link the land-sea trade corridor with the booming China-Europe freight train services and the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Additionally, it will assist domestic companies in fully utilizing the benefits of the rules of the RCEP agreement, and enable industrial collaboration between businesses in China and Southeast Asian countries, said Wu Haiping, director-general of the GAC's Department of General Operations.

Launched in 2017, the land-sea corridor is a trade and logistics passage that was jointly built by province-level regions in western China and member economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It is also one of the key projects of the Belt and Road Initiative.

In addition to utilizing the existing regular freight train services, the administration will support the operations of specialized train services for automobile transportation, refrigerated goods and certain types of cargo.

This expansion aims to meet the transportation needs of specific goods like vehicles, fruit, frozen meat and aquatic products, thereby diversifying the types of goods transported via these freight services for both imports and exports, said Wu.

"Simultaneously, we will encourage businesses to leverage the China-Laos and China-Vietnam railway services to explore cross-border e-commerce and market procurement activities," he said, adding this will further increase the sources of goods for the international railway intermodal transport along the trade corridor.

Owing to its advantages in terms of transportation speed, cost-effectiveness and safety, railway-maritime intermodal transport has gained favor among Chinese and foreign companies, and has witnessed rapid development in recent years. More than 4,500 such services were operated along the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor in the first half of 2023, up 9 percent year-on-year, GAC data showed.

Meanwhile, the trade corridor facilitated provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities along its route to partake in foreign trade amounting to 350 billion yuan ($48.73 billion), up an impressive 40 percent year-on-year.

These province-level markets saw their exports of electromechanical products reach 75 billion yuan between January and June, up a staggering 120 percent year-on-year. In parallel, exports of labor-intensive products rose to 27 billion yuan, up a phenomenal 150 percent year-on-year, the GAC said.

According to Wang Honghan, deputy director-general of Chongqing Customs, a local unit of the GAC, the increasing trade volume has efficiently boosted the movement of resources and production factors across the Asia-Pacific region, leading to a significant reduction in both logistical time and costs.

Trade and investment often follow closely on the heels of infrastructure connectivity. More companies in western China are eager to expand their footprint in overseas markets amid tail winds from facilitated transportation, said Lin Meng, director of the Modern Supply Chain Research Institute, which is part of the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

China's western region recorded foreign trade worth 1.8 trillion yuan in the first half of this year, up 3.5 percent year-on-year and 1.4 percentage points higher than the overall increase in China's foreign trade during the six-month period, the GAC said.