Reporter 16 in the General Administration of Customs regular press briefing was informed that, in order to further promote the high-quality development of comprehensive bonded areas, the General Administration of Customs recently launched 23 reform initiatives around the policy supply, functional expansion, simplification of procedures, process optimization, and system improvement in five areas.

　　Specifically, the reform initiatives mainly include adjusting and optimizing the inspection and quarantine mode of operation, simplify the production of equipment to lift the supervision procedures, the implementation of the classification and grading of the management of the choke point, optimize the supervision of goods returned from abroad, to support the quality of bonded maintenance upgrading as well as adjusting the key commodity management measures.

　　In terms of optimizing the process of supervision, the relevant reform initiatives include optimizing the logic of verification and release of goods in and out of the Comprehensive Protection Zone, and supporting multiple types of goods to be assembled in and out of the zone; optimizing the process of entering and exiting the zone for "one-ticket-multi-vehicle" goods and permitting specific types of cargoes to be reported and distributed in a whole, and single-vehicle entering and exiting the zone; and optimizing the supervision of goods returned from overseas, and reducing the proportion of on-site investigations and written investigations.

　　In terms of functional business expansion, the relevant reform initiatives include promoting the dynamic adjustment of the bonded maintenance catalog, including more high-tech, high-value-added, environmentally friendly low-risk products into the bonded maintenance product catalog; supporting the development of aviation flight simulators in the zone, bonded training of large-scale medical equipment, to meet the needs of the domestic market, and to increase the scale of bonded training; as well as allowing the duty-free goods to be imported from overseas via the zone, facilitating enterprises to flexibly adjust the operation of the zone. This facilitates enterprises to flexibly adjust their business strategies, broaden their sales channels, and promote the development of bonded and duty-free shops.

　　According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 2.4 million employees in the special customs supervision zones, with nearly 9,000 employees per square kilometer. The General Administration of Customs also put forward in this reform to support the unified planning in the comprehensive bonded area, according to the need to set up canteens, charging piles, parking lots and other necessary productive ancillary service facilities, to provide work convenience for employees in the area.

　　Chen Zhenchong, director of the Customs General Administration of Free Trade Zones and Special Areas Development Division, said at the meeting that the next step, the General Administration of Customs will be in accordance with the maturity of a promotion of the principle of organizing and carrying out the preparation of announcements, system adjustments, interpretation of the supporting implementation of the work, and to promote the implementation of various reform initiatives and good and fast effect.

　　As an important platform for opening up to the outside world, customs special supervisory zones, with comprehensive bonded zones as the main body, play an important role in expanding foreign trade, attracting foreign investment and promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, etc. Up to now, there are a total of various types of special supervisory zones across the country. Up to now, there are 171 special zones of various types nationwide, including 161 comprehensive bonded zones, distributed in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities).