Qingdao Daily/Guanhai News (December 19) – On the evening of December 18, the China Customs Brokers Association and the Beijing Bairui Trade Security and Facilitation Research Center jointly released the 2025 assessment results for the cross-border trade business environment of container goods at maritime ports. The city of Qingdao once again achieved the highest rating, ranking first in the comprehensive score for the fifth consecutive year.
In recent years, Qingdao has fully leveraged its advantages as an international shipping hub. The General Office of the Municipal Government (Port Office), in collaboration with Qingdao Customs, Shandong Port Group's Qingdao Port, and other entities, has focused on optimizing processes, improving efficiency, and reducing costs. These efforts have promoted more direct government-enterprise communication, provided effective relief for businesses, and facilitated cross-border trade, building a first-class maritime port and bolstering high-quality economic and social development.
Government-enterprise communication has been continuously optimized. Over the past five years, Qingdao has introduced 131 reform measures for cross-border trade facilitation. It has innovatively implemented a campaign for the "pinpoint delivery" of port policies and launched a series of activities such as the "Qingdao Port Lecture Hall." A "Cross-Border Trade Facilitation Fast-Track" service mechanism has been established, which combines online and offline modes as well as interviews and exchanges to interpret the latest policies and address inquiries on-site, effectively enhancing the experience and engagement of enterprises. Since the beginning of this year, Qingdao has held five regular "Customs-Enterprise Face-to-Face" events, resolving 103 issues for 83 companies. It has also created a "shop and get refund on the spot" service brand for departure tax refunds, increasing the number of departure tax refund stores in the city to 81, with sales from these refunds growing by 71.93% year-on-year.
Cross-border trade has become more convenient. This year, Qingdao has continued to develop the "Guan-Gang Tong" (Customs-Port Connect) platform, integrating data from customs, maritime safety, border inspection, and enterprises to effectively reduce the inspection and clearance time for import and export goods. Currently, the platform covers six major business sectors, including general cargo, bulk cargo, and dangerous goods supervision. It has streamlined 11 port-related operational steps into just 3, saving 6 hours on logistics operations, payment, and pick-up for a single shipment. The city pioneered a joint inspection model for crew changes featuring "online integrated declaration, offline joint inspection," which consolidates crew inspection procedures and opens channels for system information sharing, promoting "cooperative inspection, one-time release" among customs and border inspection departments. A joint prevention and control mechanism for the supervision of imported and exported dangerous goods has been established, with joint law enforcement by maritime safety, customs, and emergency management departments. The average customs clearance time for imported dangerous goods is now only 1.49 days, a 50% reduction from before the reform.
Port efficiency has been constantly enhanced. Qingdao has advanced the integrated construction of a smart port, smart customs, smart border inspection, and smart maritime services. It hosted the 2025 National Conference on Port Affairs, and its practices were selected as typical cases for national smart port construction. Three of its cases were included in the province's "Top Ten" innovative practices for optimizing the port's business environment. The "Shan-Gang Tong" (Shandong Port Connect) intelligent transshipment model has been innovatively implemented, creating a "1+6" intelligent transshipment system with Qingdao Port as the hub, connecting with feeder ports in six other cities, including Yantai and Rizhao. This has significantly improved the efficiency of cargo transfer between ports, reducing the number of data items in documents from 46 to 6, and drastically cutting down the manifest release time from 45 hours to under 1 hour. A large model for port services, "Ark TaaS" (Transportation as a Service), has been developed. Relying on the "Yungangtong" (Cloud Port Connect) comprehensive service platform, it provides full-chain services such as route planning and cost estimation. Currently, the average single-crane operational efficiency at the automated terminal of Shandong Port's Qingdao Port has reached 62.62 moves per hour, breaking the world record for loading and unloading efficiency 13 times.
Editor: Yuan Ruichen
