At 0:00 on Jan. 1 this year, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force, marking the sailing of a free trade zone being the largest in population, economic and trade scale with the greatest development potential in the world. As a free trade area in the northeastern region leading to the sea and air gates in the world, Dalian Free Trade Area, under the leadership of the Working Committee, Management Commission of Jinpu New District, comprehensively implements the work requirement of the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government for high-quality implementation of RCEP, spares no effort to forge a new engine for deepening the RCEP regional economic and trade cooperation, a new highland for the RCEP enterprises entering Chinese cutting edge and high-quality docking with the RCEP economic and trade rules. Recently, the journalists from the major media in our city have visited Dalian Free Trade Area to physically experience the measures and achievements made by the Area to be first to seize the RCEP opportunity and make all efforts to forge an upgraded version of the pilot free trade zone, and published and broadcast a series of reports.

        Here are all the contents published in Dalian Daily:

Recently, Vasi Shipping's vessel "NORTHWINTER" fully loaded with minerals, fertilizers and other goods called the Container Terminal of Dalian Port for the first time. Vasi Shipping, which is headquartered in Singapore, mainly operates on the Asian routes and provides service for the transportation among the ports in South Asia and Southeast Asia. The extension of Vasi Shipping’s India-Pakistan route to Dalian is a new change brought by the sailing of RCEP. 

        Have a clear channel of “sea, land and air” and increase the regional opening up level

Since RCEP came into effect, the trade contacts between Dalian and Southeast Asia have become increasingly active. Dalian Free Trade Area, being first to seize the opportunity, actively serves Liaogang Group and expands the overseas market, has newly opened the four Southeast Asian container routes, including the Vietnamese route of Wanhai/Yunda, the Southeast Asian route of Honghai/Gaoli/Haifeng/Singapore Private Shipping, the Southeast Asian route of Sea-land Asia and the Vietnamese route of Dafei to make the Southeast Asian container routes of Dalian Port increase to 23 for a business increment about 61,000 TEUs. In March this year, "the direct route from Dalian to Australia for the ship Venus", as the first direct route of Dalian Port for Australia, was officially put into operation in Dalian Free Trade Area, which fills a gap in direct shipping service from Dalian Port to Australia. By now, the container liner routes of Dalian port have reached 101, which cover all the core ports of the RCEP member countries. Relevant principal of Liaogang Group said: "On basis of the successful opening of the direct route to Australia, Liaogang Group will give full play to the advantages of Dalian Port in location, hardware, service, etc., combine with the trade development of the RCEP member countries and the regional industrial needs to constantly improve the route network layout and shipping zone service efficiency, broaden the sea and land trade channels of the northeastern region, build a new highland for regional opening up."

On the day when RCEP came into effect, Dalian Airlines, as an enterprise in Dalian Free Trade Area, opened the route Dalian-Hefei-Nanning to erect an air bridge connecting Dalian, the international shipping center of Northeast Asia, and Nanning, the permanent place for China-ASEAN Expo. Not long after that, Dalian Airlines had the route Dalian-Chengdu densified, with the number of direct flights to and from “one city and two airports” in Chengdu increasing from 4 to 6, and a bilateral interaction mode between northeast-southwest formed to better meet the demand for air transport service under the RCEP background. Dalian Free Trade Area, through the new sea and air channels and efficient docking with the China-Europe freight trains connecting “One Belt One Road”, has built a big international logistics channel connecting the Southeast Asian countries with Central Asia, Russia and the European continent, and strongly increased the opening-up level of the region.

        Drive the “cloud series” and enhance the strategic position of Dalian as a port city.

The logistics channels must be "open" and more importantly, they must be "clear". Dalian Free Trade Area, together with the customs department, has been improving the customs clearance facilitation level with great efforts. It united with the Customs of Beiliang Port to take the lead in implementing the supervision to the conditional delivery-taking of imported grains. According to the application demands of enterprises, the customs makes on-site inspection for meeting relevant conditions after review and allows goods to be taken away from the port after sampling for inspection for a whole ship and enterprises to process and use goods after the test results are issued. This measure makes cargo ships realize docking, inspecting, unloading and delivery-taking after unloading instantly after arriving at the port, with the dispatching time taken for each ship being reduced by 7~9 days, the utilization rate of berths increased by 8.3%, and the silo turnover efficiency increased by 15%. In consideration of the emergency demand of export goods customs clearance in the last loading link, Dayaowan Customs has established a platform for intelligent processing of export release instructions to realize a new mode of “cloud processing” to export loading instructions under which "an enterprise makes declarations independently, the terminal checks the information, the customs examines instantly and an instruction is processed right away", electronized "treatment in seconds", "release in seconds" for abnormality handling, result in a significant increase in the efficiency of actual goods customs clearance, save customs clearance time and costs for enterprises.

Relevant principal from Dayaowan Customs told the reporter: “Since this year, Dayaowan Customs has further increased the customs clearance efficiency, been expanding the"single window" function of international trade, improving the innovation and application level of science and technology constantly, promoting the three-dimensional supervision philosophy of "being free from contact, full coverage, full duration”, launched such free trade innovation measures as ‘cloud examination’, ‘cloud processing’ and cross-border e-commerce + repacking entrepot trade to help Dalian Free Trade Area be integrated deep into the RCEP to give full play to the role of a tie linking domestic and international markets and resources."

        Next, Dalian Free Trade Area will further improve the international logistics hub connecting the RCEP countries, enhance the trade collection and distribution capacity with Japan and Korea, and forge a new mode of land and sea combined transportation in Northeast Asia; further gather ship elements, expand the scale of international transshipment and consolidation business, and encourage the aggregation of high-value-added port and shipping business oriented to the RCEP countries such as Japan, Korea and Australia; have the customs department involved to insist on being guided by problems and demands, further promote the systematic and integrated reform and innovation of "cloud series", increase the level of trade facilitation, digitalization and intelligence, and further strengthen the strategic position and leading role of the port of Dalian in RCEP.