On June 14, a special transit train with 100 standard containers was sent out from Qingdao Multimodal Transportation Center in the SCO Demonstration Zone after Jiaozhou Customs had completed the transit transportation procedures. Previously, the Thai spices and Vietnamese tires worth USD 1.88 million were shipped from Thailand's Linchaban Port and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh Calais Port respectively, and after transiting through Qingdao Port, they were transferred to the China-European Express (Qilu) at the Intermodal Transportation Center.

The whole journey takes only 20 days to reach Almaty, Kazakhstan, which is unimaginable for Thai and Vietnamese exporters before.

It all started back in June 2018 when China announced the construction of the SCO Model Area Multimodal Transport Center in Qingdao. As the only local economic and trade cooperation demonstration zone for SCO countries in China, the SCO Demonstration Zone has grown from nothing to a lot in the four years of its construction, with the full promotion of relevant authorities and the efforts of market players to develop it. At present, the number of regular international train lines has reached 16, reaching 49 cities in 20 countries along the SCO and "One Belt, One Road".

East-west two-way mutual assistance, land and sea inside and outside the linkage, in the forefront of the opening up pattern of the SCO demonstration area is also helping the gradual formation of a new open pattern. According to customs statistics, since the establishment of the SCO Demonstration Zone in Qingdao in June 2018, customs has supervised the arrival and departure of 2,031 China-EU trains with 167,000 TEUs in four years.

Today, the busy scene of trucks shuttling and containers being lifted and loaded is not only the daily picture of Qingdao Multimodal Transport Center in the SCO Demonstration Zone, but also a vivid epitome of China's insistence on opening up to the outside world and deepening international cooperation on the "Belt and Road".

In the past four years, the cargo structure of the SCO demonstration zone trains has been further optimized, and customs clearance and logistics procedures have become more convenient and efficient. With the paperless declaration of transit cargo transportation, railroad fast customs clearance and other new models to benefit enterprises, cross-border e-commerce trains, "one single system" and other new business is running smoothly, the logistics chain, supply chain cycle more smoothly. A new SCO demonstration zone is accelerating the construction to become a new highland for international cooperation of "One Belt, One Road".

In order to serve the development of the SCO Demonstration Zone, Qingdao Customs has issued 17 promotion opinions, identified 8 key support projects, promoted the implementation of a number of major policies, major reforms and major projects with gold content, leadership and demonstration, and made every effort to build the most internationally competitive customs supervision and service system.

Take the paperless measure of transit cargo transportation declaration in the process of transit train supervision as an example, the electronic data declared by enterprises through information technology is reviewed and released online in real time, which reduces the time and workload for enterprises to prepare paper materials and submit materials to and from the site. This makes the perennial processing of the liner business of Shandong Chenqi Port Storage International Logistics Co. Luan Haobo, manager of the company, told the reporter: "After the transit transport goods arrive at Qingdao port, we can make transit declaration through the international trade 'single window'."

The import and export supervision of the originating trains is also becoming more and more convenient. It is reported that since October last year, Qingdao Customs has implemented the railroad fast clearance mode in the SCO demonstration zone, with data interaction between Customs and railroad departments. The Customs of the outbound trains will upload the data of the trains, and the customs of the port will grasp the situation of the trains through data docking to realize automatic release without the need for the operating enterprises to declare the transit procedures separately.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)