Xiamen’s Intelligent FTZ

‘We used to spend one or two days fi n- ishing all the necessary customs pro- cedures,” said Chen Fangfang, a staff member at the Xiamen Port Joint Inspection Center of the China (Fujian) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ), on August 4. “Now we only need to fi ll in one form online, which can be fi nished in a few minutes,” Chen told Beijing Review.

The process Chen referred to is the single-window foreign trade service imple- mented in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeast China’s Fujian Province, since 2015. Under that system, foreign trade companies submit all the required documents and electronic information via a single platform—on which processing results are also displayed. The platform is jointly operated by 36 depart- ments in charge of customs, commerce, planning, taxation, port and other affairs, offering 65 types of services. As a result, ef- fi ciency has been improved by more than 50 percent, the average time needed for cus- toms declaration reduced from four hours to 5-10 minutes, and the waiting time for ships at port reduced from 36 hours to a minimum of 2.5 hours.

A multi-purpose platform

In 2016, the port of Xiamen became the first in the country to offer a single-window service for all imports and exports of general goods, international means of transport, cross-border e-commerce parcels, international express mail, as well as the exit and entry of people. Chen said in 2016 alone, 10,150 companies went through inspection and quarantine procedures at the port of Xiamen. “The number of items for dec- laration has been cut by 30 percent, and paper declaration forms have been cut by more than 250 pages,” she said.

Since 2017, the platform has also pro- vided tax refund and self-declaration services for individual travelers. Till now, more than 17,000 people have gone through self-dec- laration procedures via e-mail. The platform has more than 5,600 users and serves 26,000 companies. Moreover, 110,000 doc- uments per day can be processed through this platform.

“The platform covers the entire port of Xiamen and has been introduced to the nearby cities of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Longyan. It also exchanges information with Singapore’s TradeNet online customs system,” Chen said. The single-window service system in Xiamen has become the country’s first pi- lot of Internet Plus-based self-declaration conducted by the General Administration of Customs, the national customs author- ity. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China has set the “Xiamen model” as the benchmark for nationwide standards.

Modern productivity

The country’s fi rst fully automated shipping ter- minal is also in the Xiamen area of Fujian FTZ. “The Yuanhai Container Terminal is an intelligent, safe and environment-friendly facility. Most of the terminal’s functions are performed by automated machines controlled by computers in a central con- trol room,” Chen Yipeng, Deputy General Manager of Xiamen Yuanhai Container Terminal Co. Ltd., told Beijing Review.

On May 27, the Yuanhai terminal re- ceived the Oriental Hong Kong, the world’s fi rst container ship capable of carrying more than 21,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of containers. It was the first time that the port of Xiamen or the Yuanhai terminal had received such a large ship.

“Since the terminal was put into opera- tion in March 2016, it has maintained a clean safety record. The number of containers handled, work effi ciency and economic ben- efi ts have all improved rapidly. The terminal has facilitated China’s industrial develop- ment,” said Chen Yipeng.

he Yuanhai terminal is also China’s fi rst berth that is completely run by electric ma- chines. “Loading and unloading operations are all completed on tracks and driven by electricity, which saves more than 25 per- cent of energy than in traditional berths and has zero emissions,” he said.

Previously manual procedures such as identification and positioning of goods are now done via intelligent sensors automati- cally. But are the intelligent sensors reliable enough to replace manual labor

“Automated terminal machines must have an intelligent eye to replace humans when it comes to identifying the shape of containers, and that must be reliable in any weather condition,” said Chen Yipeng, adding that the Yuanhai terminal’s laser scanners meet such requirements.

“The terminal is the first fourth-genera- tion automated terminal in the world. More importantly, China holds its proprietary intel- lectual property rights,” he said.