China to set up 29 new national demonstration zones on import promotion

Photo taken on Nov. 4, 2021 shows an exterior view of the National Exhibition and Convention Center, the main venue for the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE), in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Zhang Haofu)

China announced the establishment of 29 new national import promotion and innovation demonstration zones Thursday, involving Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong and other provinces and cities, reported Chinanews.com.

This is China's latest move to encourage the expansion of imports.

In terms of geographical distribution, the 29 additional import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones cover the areas in eastern, central and western China as well as northeast China.

In 2020, China has set up the first batch of 10 import demonstration zones. In 2021, China announced to add more demonstration zones. Up to now, there are 39 import demonstration areas nationwide in China.

In recent years, China has taken a number of measures to expand imports, including shortening import customs clearance time, increasing list of cross-border e-commerce retail imports and etc. According to official data, China's total import value in the first three quarters of this year stood at13.44 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.2 percent.