On the afternoon of October 16 , to the sound of the train’s whistle, 53 containers of small commodities released by Yiwu Customs House(affiliated to Hangzhou Customs District) left Yiwu and started their “trip” to Central Asia and Europe, taking the train that travels along the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe rail route. This is the 32nd train that would run along this Europe-bound trade route this year. 

Since the official coming online of the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe rail rout in July 2011, trains began to run on such new China-Europe rail routs as Chengdu-Europe, Zhengzhou-Europe, Wuhan-Xinjiang-Europe,Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe,Hefei-Xinjiang-Europe, Suzhou-Manzhouli-Europe, which are thought to be the trade channels connecting China and Europe and the transport lines for the low-cost logistics along the Modern Silk Road. According to the statistics, Alashankou (Alataw Pass) Customs House (affiliated to Urumqi Customs District) has exercised control over 114 China-Europe cargo trains for the first 9 months of the year, and Manzhouli Customs District has exercised control over 22 outbound Suzhou-Manzhouli-Europe trains during the same period of time. 

When exercising control over the goods ferried by the China-Europe trains, Customs administrations have employed the “Declare at home, Release at port” clearance model, streamlined and simplified the Customs procedures and clearance formalities and opened green channels where the 24-hour work-at-appointment scheme would be used. Thanks to the efforts made by Customs administrations, the Customs transit formalities can usually be done in half an hour and the whole package of clearance formalities in 4 hours. When inspecting the goods, Customs officers will use the non-intrusive cargo train inspection system to speed up the clearance process based on the fact that sufficient and effective control has been done beforehand. What’s more, to turn into reality the idea of non-stop cargo transport, China Customs has worked with foreign Customs administrations along the international cargo rail routes, for example, the Customs in Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, to push through the framework of mutual recognition of controls, mutual assistance of enforcement and mutual exchange of information. 

For the first 9 months of this year, export of small commodities in Yiwu has amounted RMB240 million to the five countries in Central Asia and RMB13.14 billion to EU, a sharp year on year increase of 320% and 24.4% respectively. These export booms are related to a “new Silk Road for small commodities”--Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe rail route. The rail route, which starts from Yiwu and enters Europe after passing through China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is now called the export artery for Yiwu’s small commodities to Central Asia, Russia and even EU countries. Trains are now running regularly on Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe route, according to Jiang Yufeng, Section Chief of the Customs Control Section of Yiwu Customs House. 

“Before, Yiwu goods to Central Asia and Far East can only be exported through road transport or sea transport. Luckily, now we have the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe rail route and what makes it better is that Customs has provided us with this service of ‘green transit channel’, which helps reduce greatly the time spent on logistics and money spent on transport”, said Liu Fengxian, manager of Yiwu Pacific International Freight Forwarding Co., Ltd. “by far this year, we have exported through rail transport about 1000 TEUs of goods.”