Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, east China - Recent (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Various of workers sorting, transferring parcels, goods
2. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Ruan Peng, manager, Cainiao Logistics, sub-company under China's e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba:
"The logistics costs on the whole have been lowered by 15 to 20 percent; and in the meantime, the time of customs clearance was shortened by one to three days. Last but not the least, costs of cross-border sellers are expected to be reduced by at least 1.5 million yuan annually."
3. Various of workers sorting, transferring parcels, goods
4. Various of customs officials checking parcels
5. Various of workers sorting, transferring parcels
6. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Guo Zhi, deputy director, Free Trade Section, Ningbo Customs Office:
"Enterprises told us the new measures are effective after they were launched more than a month ago. The simplified customs clearance procedure has helped reduce costs by 30 to 40 percent."
7. Customers
8. Cross-border goods

Customs authorities in Ningbo, a coastal city in east China's Zhejiang Province, have recently taken a string of measures to shorten customs clearance time.

The customs reforms prompted the business volume in the city to rank the country's first in the first half of 2019, with 37.408 million orders and the value of goods reaching 7.04 billion yuan, up by 60.6 percent and 78.2 percent year on year respectively, according to official data in early July.

Goods sold in the country and cross-border parcels had to be separately sorted and delivered in the Ningbo Bonded Area previously. As a result the customs clearance time was long and it was inconvenient for the customers.

Now new measures have allowed all goods stored in the same warehouse to be sent out together, no matter whether they are cross-border or not.

These measures have accordingly greatly facilitated cross-border e-commerce, and reduced the transport costs of enterprises.

"The logistics costs on the whole have been lowered by 15 to 20 percent; and in the meantime, the time of customs clearance was shortened by one to three days. Last but not the least, costs of cross-border sellers are expected to be reduced by at least 1.5 million yuan annually," said Ruan Peng, a manager of the Cainiao Logistics, a sub-company under China's e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba.

Furthermore, the customs office has invited banks to guarantee the rebate taxes for enterprises for a period of some two weeks, which enables more companies to keep stable liquidity.

Thanks to these new measures, the number of enterprises registering in the Ningbo Bonded Area in the first six months exceeded 620, and the warehouse area was expanded to 600,000 square meters.

"Enterprises told us the new measures are effective after they were launched more than a month ago. The simplified customs clearance procedure has helped to reduce costs by 30 to 40 percent," said Guo Zhi, deputy director of the Free Trade Section with the Ningbo Customs Office.

China's e-commerce trade volume reached 31.63 trillion yuan (4.58 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2018, according to official data released at the end of May.

According to the report on China's e-commerce development in 2018, over 9 trillion yuan of online retail sales was made and online payment exceeded 200 trillion yuan last year.

More than 50 billion packages were delivered last year.

The total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce reached 134.7 billion yuan over the same period.