With digital intelligence breaking bottlenecks, institutional innovation boosting efficiency, platform and management "iterative upgrades" accelerating inland cross-border trade

"Customs clearance" has found new solutions in Changsha.

In March this year, Changsha was selected as one of the 20 newly added pilot cities for cross-border trade facilitation in China. Changsha has made great efforts to cultivate and form two replicable and scalable cross-border trade facilitation reform practices, covering "port linkage model innovation" and "supervision optimization for new business forms," making the customs clearance of inland Changsha increasingly smooth.

From January to September this year, the China-Europe freight train service in Changsha handled a total of 799 train trips, a year-on-year increase of 10.06%. The city's total social logistics value is expected to grow 4.2% year on year to 2.66 trillion CNY.

Breaking down regulatory barriers and reshaping business processes to free cargo circulation from "running around exhaustingly"

How long does it take for a foreign trade order to be shipped from a comprehensive bonded zone, transferred across ports, and loaded onto a China-Europe Railway Express freight train? In Changsha, the answer is that at the fastest, containers can be picked up in 1.5 hours, and automatic write-off of transit customs declarations is completed in four to six hours.

In the past, this took at least two to three days. Where does the change come from?

It turns out that Changsha is originally a typical inland port city. Its comprehensive bonded zone and ports such as Huanghua Airport, Xianing Port, and Changsha International Railway Port geographically scattered. Not only are they physically separated, but data systems of various supervision sites were not well connected in the past. When enterprises handled cargo transfer across these sites, there were many difficulties in declaration, document transmission, and manual write-off of transit declarations.

Cross-port transfer thus became a "difficult hurdle" for cargo exports.

How to speed up customs clearance? Changsha takes the China (Changsha) International Trade Single Window platform as a general hub, connects to the customs H2018 clearance system and the intelligent checkpoint system of Golden Customs Project PhaseⅡ, and interfaces with all terminal operation systems for waterway, railway, aviation, and cross-border e-commerce to establish a unified electronic logistics ledger. This enables all business data to be "entered once and reused by multiple parties."

Reshaping core business processes is key to speeding up customs clearance. On the one hand, efforts have been made to promote the linkage between the comprehensive bonded zone and various ports. Enterprises submit an integrated declaration through the online single window platform, the system automatically checks and approves it, the checkpoint automatically inspects and releases the cargo, and the logistics ledger is automatically written off. On the other hand, for the cargo consolidated and transshipped through multiple ports via road-rail and road-water transport service, the consolidated container declaration and the release form are automatically generated. The entire process of train/ship plan declaration is handled online, with the system automatically preparing documents and the checkpoints automatically releasing the cargo.

Not only has data transmission been accelerated, but the checkpoints have also become "smarter" and smoother. Key customs-supervised sites such as the Xianing Port, Changsha International Railway Port, Central South Consolidation Center, and cross-border e-commerce supervision center have completed intelligent upgrades of their checkpoints. They are equipped with license plate recognition and smart customs lock recognition devices to make customs clearance more intelligent. Relying on electronic customs locks and checkpoint routing services, the closed-loop circulation and full-process visual supervision are achieved for cross-site cargo transfer.

Reforms tackle bottlenecks and achieve results right at those bottlenecks. Dozens of paper documents have been converted to online electronic processing. Automatic write-off of transit customs declarations saves four to six hours of clearance time. The processing time for import container pickup has been reduced from three to seven days to as little as 1.5 hours. Waterway import operations have been streamlined from 14 core steps to seven, reducing enterprise operating costs by about 15%.

Front-loading inspection prior to container loading so that LCL cargo no longer needs to be "turned upside down"

As foreign trade orders show the characteristics of small batches, multiple shipments, and fast turnover, the business of consolidated export containers with "multiple declarations in one container" is growing rapidly.

However, under the traditional model of "loading before customs clearance," the cargo must be consolidated and loaded into containers outside the customs supervision site, and then the entire container is brought in for inspection. What is the result? Cargoes are hard to find, unpacking is cumbersome, reloading is slow, and container detention is lengthy. Due to complicated procedures and low fault tolerance, logistics and customs clearance costs for enterprises remain high.

Where the pain points lie is where reform should be directed. Changsha has carried out institutional innovation at the Hunan Central South Consolidation Center, piloting a new supervision model of "inspect-before-loading." The declaration and inspection steps are moved before container loading. Cargo first enters the warehouse and completes customs procedures, and then is consolidated into containers and transferred out for shipment.

The supporting software and hardware must keep pace with the new model operation. The Logistics and Port Office of the Changsha Municipal People's Government, together with functional regulatory departments such as the Port Supervision Division of Changsha Customs and Xingsha Customs, guided the Hunan Central South Consolidation Center to complete the acceptance inspection of its Phase Ⅱ site expansion. The updated site simultaneously meets customs supervision requirements and the actual needs of enterprise consolidation operations. At the same time, the "inspect-before-loading" supervision plan for consolidated cargo exports at the Central South International Land Port was formulated and issued, clarifying business standards, operational nodes, and regulatory boundaries to ensure the standardized implementation of the reform. The "inspect-before-loading" business system was developed to collect real-time data on the entry, storage location, movement and allocation, container loading, and warehouse release of consolidated cargo, achieving closed-loop information management of the entire consolidation business process.

"Inspection is still the same. It is just that through the innovative application of the combined supervision model of 'inspect-before-loading plus export customs-supervised warehouse,' the bottleneck has been cleared," said Xue Cheng, deputy division chief of the Logistics Supervision Division of Xingsha Customs. Moving the inspection step earlier spares consolidated cargo from the trouble of "turning everything upside down," and customs clearance efficiency can be improved by about 30%.

Hunan Central South International Land Port Co., Ltd. has calculated the benefits: in the past, a batch of consolidated cargo could take an extra half day to a full day after unpacking and inspection; now, once the cargo enters the warehouse, procedures are completed, and the container leaves as soon as it is loaded. The shipping cycle is shortened, and overall logistics costs are reduced by about 15%. "What the reform has eliminated is precisely the 'hidden cost' that troubles enterprises most," said Zhu Haitao, head of the company's commercial department.

"The series of reforms did not build a separate system. Instead, based on actual conditions, through digital intelligence empowerment and institutional innovation, we have achieved 'iterative upgrades' of platforms and management," said Feng Weimin, member of the CPC Leadership Group and deputy director of the Logistics and Port Office of the Changsha Municipal People's Government. Changsha, an inland city, is using this set of "new customs clearance strategies" to turn the "checkpoint" of customs clearance into a "gateway" of opening up.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government. www.enghunan.gov.cn. 

Translator: Yu Jiangjiang

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn