China's top legislature on Tuesday adopted a bill allowing Hong Kong to set up a customs office in the neighboring port city of Shenzhen on the Chinese mainland.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is authorized to exercise its customs laws and regulations from its office leased from the city of Shenzhen.

The move is aimed at facilitating passenger and vehicle customs clearance between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, said sources with the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

Shenzhen and Hong Kong will follow their own legal and law enforcement procedures and use their own resources in passenger and auto vehicle customs clearance, the source said.

In March 2002, the State Council gave the green light to a new model of "one port, two customs offices" proposed by the HKSAR government.

Located at Shenzhen Bay Port, the new office is expected to become operational by the middle of next year and will be able to handle 58,600 vehicles and 60,000 passengers per day.

A bridge linking Hong Kong and Shenzhen across the Pearl River was listed as a major state project in the nation's 10th Five-Year Plan and construction began in August 2003.

Shenzhen and Hong Kong originally planned to establish their customs offices at opposite ends of the bridge.

But due to difficulties in land reclamation on the Hong Kong side, the HKSAR government asked for permission to lease a stretch of land and build its customs office on Shenzhen side, which requires the solving of legal problems.

Elsie Leung Oi-sie, deputy head of the HKSAR Committee for the Basic Law, said the legislature's decision highlighted Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy.

In the past five years, the number of passengers in and out of Hong Kong via Lo Wu and three other crossings between Shenzhen and Hong Kong had increased from about 100 million to 140 million each year, and the number of vehicles each day is more than 50,000.

Tsang Hin-chi, a Hong Kong member of NPC Standing Committee, said the customs office in Shenzhen indicated the central government's implementation of the "one country, two systems" policy and its determination to maintain Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability.

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