Integrated Implementation of Existing and New Policies: Continuous Empowerment of Customs Clearance Facilitation for Innovative Development of Foreign Trade

In 2025, China’s total import and export volume exceeded RMB 45 trillion, hitting an all-time high and marking a successful conclusion to foreign trade development under the 14th Five-Year Plan. Over the entire 14th Five-Year Plan period, the cumulative import and export volume of China’s foreign trade surpassed RMB 200 trillion, a 40% increase compared with the 13th Five-Year Plan period, demonstrating strong resilience and vitality.

A review of the high-quality development of foreign trade in 2025 and throughout the 14th Five-Year Plan period shows that policy support has been indispensable. More proactive macroeconomic policies and special policies for foreign trade have generated synergies. Existing and new policies work in tandem to unleash strong momentum for stabilizing foreign trade. As a frontline player in foreign trade, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) has focused on customs clearance facilitation and continuously rolled out policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade, helping enterprises secure orders and explore new markets. It has written an outstanding chapter in China’s remarkable foreign trade performance.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the GAC successively issued policy documents to stabilize foreign trade, including 10 Measures for Keeping Foreign Trade Stable and Improving Its Quality and 16 Measures for Optimizing the Port Business Environment and Facilitating Customs Clearance for Enterprises. Targeted efforts have been made to improve clearance convenience, boost vitality and cut costs, delivering precise support to enterprises to retain orders and expand markets.

To facilitate customs clearance for enterprises, the GAC has steadily advanced reforms to clearance regimes for imported goods, optimized clearance procedures, prioritized imports of energy resources and high-quality agricultural and food products, and further facilitated expanded exports of automobiles and spare parts. These commodities, which account for a large share of total imports and exports, can enter and exit the country more efficiently, fostering new competitive edges. For example, the pilot scheme for conformity assessment of packaging production lines for exported lithium batteries has been expanded, lifting enterprises’ export efficiency by 75%. Strong support has been given to exports of electric vehicles, photovoltaic products, lithium batteries and other “new three” products. Their export volume reached nearly RMB 1.3 trillion in 2025, 3.5 times the figure for 2020.

To strengthen enterprises’ innovation capacity, the GAC has continued to optimize the port business environment and vigorously supported the development of new business models under the “bonded +” framework, such as cross-border e-commerce and bonded maintenance and remanufacturing. For instance, customs declaration documents for cross-border e-commerce exports have been simplified, filing requirements for cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses abolished, and the pilot scope of the “inspection before loading” scheme for consolidated export cargo expanded. This has greatly reduced repeated loading and unloading, enabled faster turnaround for enterprises, and sustained sound import growth of cross-border e-commerce. According to preliminary customs statistics, China’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached RMB 2.75 trillion in 2025, up 69.7% from 2020.

To help enterprises cut costs and raise efficiency, the GAC guides enterprises to fully leverage preferential tax policies and launched Version 2.0 of the China Customs Rules of Origin Service Platform. In 2025, the value of goods for which exporters applied for preferential certificates of origin stood at RMB 2.9 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 13.7%. Local customs authorities are encouraged to deepen cooperation with financial institutions and local governments to help micro, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises access bank credit facilities and ease financing difficulties and high financing costs. The benefits of the voluntary disclosure policy continue to be unlocked. In 2025, over 5,000 cases were disposed of with mitigated, reduced or waived administrative penalties in accordance with the law, and more than RMB 80 million in overdue tax surcharges were remitted for enterprises.

To ensure enterprises are well informed and can fully benefit from these policies, the GAC has built an integrated online and offline policy service system. It has improved the “Customs Chief Delivers Policies to Enterprises” mechanism and developed featured on-demand policy services such as the “Policy Express Channel”, ensuring policy benefits reach enterprises directly and promptly. Local customs authorities carry out tailored assistance activities including “Zero-distance Interaction between Customs and Enterprises” and “Face-to-face Dialogues between Customs and Enterprises”, removing the last-mile barriers to policy implementation. Leveraging new artificial intelligence technologies, the GAC is exploring the use of large language models to intelligently match enterprise demands with policy supply. Customs policies can be automatically and accurately pushed to enterprises on a point-to-point basis, transforming the paradigm from “enterprises searching for policies” to “policies finding enterprises”. A suite of AI-powered customs services, including the 12360 Intelligent Customer Service based on large models and the “Haiwa” intelligent Q&A bot on the GAC official website, have entered trial operation, bringing policy inquiry services into a more precise and efficient AI era.

This year marks the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan. To secure a good start for foreign trade, the GAC is further tapping into the combined effects of existing and new policies. It has recently introduced a package of measures to boost trade facilitation and new business forms: 25 cross-border trade facilitation measures are being replicated and promoted to release further dividends by enabling efficient cross-border logistics, optimizing supervision over special commodities, supporting bonded testing services in comprehensive bonded zones, and upgrading smart supervision and services. A new customs policy for multimodal transport has been launched; pilot supervision modes for sea-rail and water-water transshipment of import and export goods have been rolled out at Shanghai, Nanjing and other customs offices. This enables enterprises to submit simpler declaration data, complete customs clearance more conveniently and operate logistics with greater flexibility, further lowering logistics costs and improving efficiency. Measures to optimize the implementation of the TIR Convention have been introduced to facilitate cross-border road transport. In addition, the Ministry of Finance, GAC and State Taxation Administration have jointly issued preferential tax policies for returned export goods under cross-border e-commerce, further cutting return costs for cross-border e-commerce operators and unlocking the sector’s development potential.

Going forward, following the arrangements for advancing innovative trade development set out at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Economic Work Conference, the GAC will focus on delivering existing policies. It will actively respond to the calls of enterprises and market concerns, and roll out additional measures to facilitate customs clearance and support market entities in due course. Standing together and working side by side with foreign trade enterprises, the GAC will make new contributions to a strong opening performance for China’s foreign trade in the 15th Five-Year Plan period.