In the summer season, the waves of heat surge along the Beibu Gulf. Entering the Qinzhou Industrial Park in China and Malaysia, the Beibu Gulf Cold Chain Bonded Trading Center is bustling with activity. Forklifts shuttle back and forth, and boxes of Cat Mountain King durians with Malaysian origin labels are orderly stored. Scanning the code can trace the entire process information. Relying on a mature cross-border cold chain system, these fresh durians can appear on market shelves in Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places within 24 hours. This maritime trade channel connecting ASEAN orchards with Chinese dining tables is full of vitality.

Efficient clearance of fresh fruits

In the past, the customs clearance process for fresh food imports in ASEAN was cumbersome. After the goods were docked, they needed to be transported, queued for inspection, and approved step by step, which took nearly half a day. For durians with short shelf life and high loss, prolonged demurrage directly increases cargo damage and logistics costs. To solve this problem, the park has deepened the reform of port clearance, implemented innovative measures such as ship side direct delivery, early declaration, and priority inspection, and provided 24-hour appointment clearance and a dedicated green channel for fresh produce. Nowadays, imported Maoshanwang durian can be directly loaded onto ships for quick inspection and release. The clearance time has been reduced from half a day to less than 2 hours, completely solving the pain points of slow clearance and high loss of fresh goods.

Regulatory intelligence upgrade

The improvement of clearance efficiency cannot be achieved without the deep empowerment of digitalization. Since the beginning of this year, Qinzhou Port Customs has been deeply involved in the construction of the Smart Bay system, comprehensively promoting convenient modes such as early declaration, two-step declaration, and ship side direct pickup. In 2025, the customs will innovate and launch the supervision mode of export transshipment between land and sea, relying on the deep integration of the digital western land and sea new channel and the smart bay system, to achieve full process visualization and online supervision of transshipment goods. With the help of the One Code Pass application, the customs has upgraded the inspection and verification of export transit container seals from manual spot checks to intelligent screening and accurate comparison. If there are no abnormal goods, they can be directly verified and released online. The single ticket operation time has been reduced by about 2 hours, greatly reducing the time of goods being detained at the port. At the same time, multiple berths in the Guozishan operation area of Jingujiang District have completed the acceptance of opening to the outside world, significantly improving the port's collection and distribution capacity.

Industrial agglomeration is gaining momentum

The core of two-way openness lies in continuously improving the level of trade facilitation. The park adheres to the dual efforts of hard connectivity and soft environment, upgrades large specialized berths in hardware, and improves the multimodal transportation system; Based on the policy advantages of the free trade zone, we have deeply cultivated the experimental field of institutional openness, and accumulated more than 240 reform achievements such as full lifecycle management of container business and cross domain supervision of new energy vehicle containers. By restructuring regulatory systems and optimizing business processes, efficient collaboration across departments and regions can be achieved, effectively reducing institutional transaction costs for enterprises.

The ultimate landing point for improving efficiency through openness is industrial agglomeration and a leap in momentum. Relying on the advantages of the new channel portal, the park is accelerating the construction of a new hub economy pattern that empowers ports, clusters industries, and links logistics. Major projects in Lingang with a total investment of over 300 billion yuan have been put into operation, accelerating the formation of industrial clusters such as green chemicals, new energy materials, and high-end equipment manufacturing. Bright data highlights development vitality: In the first half of this year, 33 new projects were signed in the park, with a total contract amount exceeding 15.2 billion yuan; The total import and export volume of foreign trade increased significantly by 375.24% year-on-year, and the momentum of an open economy continued to burst.

From single channel circulation to comprehensive empowerment of hubs, from single point breakthroughs at ports to cross-border industrial cooperation, the China Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park breaks through barriers with openness and empowers with innovation. This land towards the sea is continuously releasing its development vitality, and moving forward in the journey of jointly building the the Belt and Road and unblocking the new land sea channel in the west.Editor/Yang Meiling