Staff members work on a glass production line in Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. Photo: cnsphoto

China's General Administration of Customs (GAC) on Sunday announced a new round of 16 measures prioritizing the synergistic development of East China's Yangtze River Delta region. 

The release of the new measures adheres to the resolution adopted at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in July, which called for enabling the Yangtze River Delta region to better play its role as an engine of high-quality development. 

The new measures focus on supporting the development of new quality productive forces, improving logistics efficiency, upgrading the business environment at ports, ensuring customs check security, and enhancing intelligent governance capability, said the GAC.

These measures will enable the Yangtze River Delta region to play a greater role in building a unified national market and will help the country deal with uncertainties in foreign trade in the coming year, Li Yong, a senior research fellow at the China Association of International Trade, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The GAC stated it would work with local governments to continuously push forward the pilot program for a "white list" of imported materials for biopharmaceuticals research and development in the region to support regional synergy and foster new quality productive forces.

It mentioned that the GAC is carrying out research to set up a pilot program in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province, for a positive list management system of imported daily consumer goods to optimize the cross-border e-commerce sector. 

To improve logistics efficiency, the GAC vowed to promote the integrated operation of logistics, optimize the coordination of operations and innovate the joint supervision model for bulk commodities.

The measures also include building a joint response mechanism targeting technical trade measures for enterprises in the region to enhance enterprise cultivation and promote interconnection.

Foreign trade, private enterprises and manufacturing in the Yangtze River Delta region all showed strong performances in recent years, said Li. "The new measures will inject more vitality of institutional opening-up into the region, and will play a critical role in enhancing the region's synergy for further opening-up," he added.

The Yangtze River Delta region is one of the most economically vibrant, open, and innovative areas in China, holding a strategic position of great significance in the nation's modernization process and comprehensive opening-up, said the GAC.

The 16 new measures are based on the first two rounds of promotional measures for the Yangtze River Delta region, which were respectively released in 2019 and 2020, said the GAC. It added that the first two rounds of measures have all been implemented and taken effect over the past five years.

From January to November 2024, the combined imports and exports of the three provinces and one city in the Yangtze River Delta region - East China's provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Shanghai Municipality - totaled 14.56 trillion yuan ($1.99 trillion), an increase of 5 percent year-on-year, accounting for 36.6 percent of the country's total imports and exports during the same period, according to official data.