Chinese President Xi Jinping took a whirlwind tour of the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone in Fujian province on Nov 1, inspecting Pingtan’s development and achievements in cross-Straits communications.

Zhou Junguang, director of Pingtan Customs, talks about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s inspection tour to the customs checkpoint in the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone in Fujian province, Nov 1. [Photo/pingtan.gov.cn]

His first stop in Pingtan was the customs checkpoint near the Haixia Bridge, which is the only overland entry and exit to the island city.

The customs point was part of the Pingtan Closure, a mechanism launched in July that put the whole of Pingtan under customs supervision and management with a number of favorable policies, especially tax.

Xi arrived at the checkpoint at around 10 am, and inspected the work of the customs monitoring center, where he learnt about the customs clearance procedures, the integrated customs surveillance system as well as a customs information management system, said Zhou Junguang, chief of the Pingtan Customs.

The customs checkpoint has opened 15 channels for vehicles with varied purposes, including 8 for those loaded with cargo subject to customs declaration and the other 7 lanes for common cars.

Xi rested assured that the non-customs declaring lanes do not affect the travel of local residents, and vehicles with imported cargo go through the lanes in a bid to enjoy tax incentives.

The major work of Pingtan Customs for the next phase, as Zhou revealed, is promoting innovation in customs supervision, express delivery by sea, cross-Straits e-commerce and facilitating Taiwanese vehicles to take the road in Fujian.

Pingtan Customs will also cooperate with its Taiwanese counterpart in law enforcement, information recognition and sharing, according to Zhou.

“If the mutual recognition of customs regulatory information between the two sides of the Straits can be realized, the customs clearance will no doubt be much faster,” he said.