The opening-up and development of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region reached new heights during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), said Jiang Liansheng, director of the Guangxi Commerce Department, on Jan 14.

The logistics costs of container transportation between Chongqing, Guangxi's Qinzhou and Singapore has declined by 30 percent since 2016, when Guangxi started to advance the construction of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor.

A batch of innovative institutional reforms have been made in order to develop the China (Guangxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone, and the zone has now attracted a total of 17,000 new companies.

The region has worked hard to get approvals from the Ministry of Commerce to set up comprehensive demonstration zones for cross-border e-commerce in Nanning and Chongzuo, carry out pilot initiatives including cross-border e-commerce retail imports and second-hand car exports, and promote the construction of industrial parks such as the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park and the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park.

Jiang said that great efforts have been made to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment. For example, the region has launched a pilot scheme to demonstrate the use of marine transportation in importing border trade goods, expanding the scale of goods to all 10 ASEAN countries. Online negotiations and trade have been made between Guangxi and parties including the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, allowing local foreign trade companies to do business through online platforms.

"The import and export volume of Guangxi in 2020 is estimated to reach 479 billion yuan ($73.90 billion), a year-on-year increase of around two percent. The overall volumes of Guangxi's processing trade and small-scale border trade have both reached historical new highs," said Jiang.

Guangxi will devote more efforts towards developing the digitization of trade, building logistics center warehouses and live-streaming bases for the ASEAN, and encouraging more ASEAN countries including Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia to set up overseas warehouses, making contributions to the scale development of the new foreign trade model. 

Liu Hongwu, deputy chairman of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, said that Guangxi will grasp the new development opportunities brought by RCEP to turn the region into a new hub of opening up and cooperation, serving both the ASEAN and the construction of the Belt and Road.