Southern China's Guangzhou City is seeing high level of international passenger and freight traffic as the ongoing annual Canton Fair attracts hundreds of thousands of exhibitors and buyers from across the world.
The 138th edition of the China Import and Export Fair, or Canton Fair, is taking place in Guangzhou from Oct 15 to Nov 4, gathering about 32,000 exhibitors and 240,000 buyers.
Data from Guangzhou Customs showed that ports in Guangzhou handled about 5,200 inbound flights and 800,000 passenger entries in this October, marking the year-on-year of growth of 9.2 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively.
The growing number of travelers has spurred rapid growth of tax refund business for departing passengers in Guangzhou.
The local authorities have set up the green channel for travelers' tax refunds and intensified data connectivity between customs and tax refund agencies to improve processing efficiency for travelers.
"We have implemented a convenient supervision model of 'one form for one package'. That means each tax refund application form corresponds to a sealed package. As long as the packaging is intact, customs can quickly verify the tax refund items, improving the efficiency of customs verification procedures by about 70 percent," said Zhang Xiaojuan, deputy director of postal supervision department of Guangzhou Customs.
In October alone, Guangzhou Customs had supervised 72,000 tons of air cargo import and export goods at Guangzhou ports, an increase of 5.3 percent year-on-year, according to Zhang.
To meet the export demand for goods ordered from the Canton Fair, the customs at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport has implemented a 24-hour smart customs clearance for air export goods, enabling the procedures to be finished within one day.
China's Guangzhou sees high passenger, freight traffic during Canton Fair
The 17th meeting of the China-Vietnam Steering Committee for Bilateral Cooperation was held in Hanoi on Tuesday.
Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Bui Thanh Son co-chaired the meeting with officials from various ministries and provincial governments of both sides participating online and offline.
Efficient coordination among various departments and localities of the two countries has led to an upgrade in all-round cooperation, Wang noted.
Faced with a complex and volatile international situation, China and Vietnam should join hands to advance the path of socialist modernization, continuously create new prospects for relations between the two parties and countries, and make new contributions to strengthening Global South unity and self-reliance and promoting international and regional peace and stability, said Wang.
He added that both sides should expand the breadth of pragmatic cooperation, including promoting railway connectivity, strengthening cooperation in agriculture, electricity, finance, key minerals, and technological innovation, and jointly safeguarding the multilateral trading system.
Efforts should also be made to maintain the momentum of people-to-people exchanges, such as promoting cooperation in media, publishing, radio, and film, and to strengthen the management of differences, advance maritime cooperation, and conclude consultations of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea at an early date, Wang added.
Son said that Vietnam has always regarded China as a top priority and strategic choice in its foreign policy, adding that Vietnam firmly adheres to the one-China policy and opposes any form of Taiwan separatist activities.
He added that Vietnam agrees with the next steps of cooperation proposed by China, and is willing to further consolidate strategic mutual trust, prepare for high-level exchanges, and strengthen party and parliamentary exchanges.
Vietnam is willing to deepen defense and security cooperation, promote mutually beneficial cooperation in trade, agriculture, finance, green energy, and cultural and educational fields, strengthen multilateral coordination and cooperation, properly manage differences, and advance Vietnam-China relations to deeper and more substantive levels, Son said.
China, Vietnam hold meeting to advance cooperation
