Land-sea corridor promotes biz ties

CHONGQING — At the Nanpeng highway logistics base in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, a cross-border highway shuttle bus, carrying gasoline engines made in Chongqing, reached the Youyi Pass in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region within a day.

After about six more hours of travel, the shuttle bus reached Vietnam. The transportation time was greatly reduced thanks to streamlined Customs clearance at the pass.

"As one of the three logistics means of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, the cross-border highway shuttle bus has proven its advantages in terms of Customs clearance efficiency and flexible arrangements under the joint support of the Customs authorities along the route," said Zeng Yi, general manager of Chongqing Highway Transportation ASEAN International Logistics Co Ltd.

Zeng added that the shuttle bus has also won the favor of more and more enterprises.

During the first six months of this year, the corridor handled more than 1.2 million such shuttle buses, an 84.18 percent surge year-on-year. International railway trains made 4,091 trips along the route, up 18.51 percent, while cross-border rail-sea intermodal trains made 4,510 trips, up 9 percent year-on-year.

The triple growth in traffic volumes of the major transport means along the route is indicative of the corridor's significant contributions to the foreign trade development in western China.

In the first half, the import and export value of provincial-level regions along the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor totaled around 350 billion yuan ($47.9 billion), up about 40 percent year-on-year, said Chongqing Customs.

During the period, about 73 million metric tons of imports and exports were handled, up 16 percent year-on-year.

Local Customs authorities in the regions along the trade corridor have teamed up to better facilitate Customs clearance "green channels", in a bid to further improve connectivity along the route, the Customs added.

In the future, Customs authorities in western China also plan to link the trade corridor with the booming China-Europe freight train services and the Yangtze River.

"The new trade corridor has provided us with a more efficient alternative, thus helping us to go global, and has greatly enhanced our competitiveness in the global market," said Wang Di, senior manager of the logistics department at Changan Automobile Co Ltd, a leading vehicle manufacturer based in Chongqing.

Launched in 2017, the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor is a trade and logistics passage jointly built by provincial-level regions in western China and ASEAN member states. The rail-sea intermodal service has expanded to cover 61 cities in 17 provincial-level areas in China.

Thanks to the trade corridor, an increasing number of products from China's inland provinces and regions along the route, such as the Ningxia Hui autonomous region's red wine and nuts from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, have explored broader markets worldwide.

Meanwhile, Cambodian rice, Thai coconuts and mangosteens and Vietnamese passion fruit and durians can reach the Chinese market through the trade corridor in just a few days.

Xinhua