Border stations in Yangtze Delta all about efficiency

In the Chuanshan port zone in Zhejiang province, thousands of ocean shipping containers are waiting to head out to sea as demand for goods remains high at home and abroad.

Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, topping the world's cargo throughput 12 years in a row, is China's largest transfer station for iron ore and crude oil.

According to the Zhejiang Department of Transportation, from January to April this year, Ningbo-Zhoushan Port completed an overall cargo throughput of 398.36 million tons, representing year-on-year growth of 15.1 percent.

Container throughput reached 10.4 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), up 25.6 percent year-on-year.

As more international routes resumed when epidemic control and prevention improved significantly, the Zhoushan exit and entry border inspection station began sharing information to coordinate supervision between ports in the Yangtze River Delta in mid-December.

This move was shortlisted as one of the 10 major institutional innovations of China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone in 2020.

Thanks to information-sharing and coordinated supervision, international ships will be exempt from border checks when moving between ports in the delta region.

For example, administrators of international ships no longer need to visit the Zhoushan entry-exit border inspection office after making an online declaration for a border check at Zhoushan Port. A quick phone call will suffice.

An office worker can deal with the declaration on an inspection platform where all shipping information housed.

The entire procedure has been reduced to three minutes from the previous one hour.

Since the measure was implemented, more than 700 international ships have benefited, shortening the berthing time in the port by about 1,575 hours and reducing operating costs by about 5.37 million yuan, according to Sun Yuetong, a staff member with the Zhoushan exit and entry station.

In another development, the Hangzhou border inspection station has organized counterterrorism exercises regularly in a bid to ensure safety during the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou in 2022, which is scheduled to kick off in September 2022.

Officers and soldiers are required to improve their abilities in foreign languages, law and border inspection, said Wang Lyvren, director of Hangzhou station, adding that nearly 80 percent of the border inspection police have reached band 4 in English in the College English Test (CET-4), a national English exam for college students.