With China’s more extensive and intensive integration into the economic globalization, China Customs is getting more and more involved in international affairs and is playing an increasingly important role in world economy and trade.

Through participating in WTO negotiations and honoring commitments to the WTO, China Customs played an important part in China’s accession to the WTO and in successfully meeting the challenges to China’s foreign trade brought about by the accession. Since China became a full member of the World Customs Organization (WCO) in 1983, China Customs has been participating actively in such activities of the WCO as Permanent Technical Committee, Enforcement Committee, Harmonized System (HS) Committee, Technical Committee on Customs Valuation, Technical Committee on the Rules of Origin and the Sub-Committee on Automatic Data Processing, and has taken an active part in the revision of the Kyoto Convention and the Nairobi Convention, the review of the Harmonized System and the formulation of the rules of origin.

China Customs engages itself actively in the multilateral, regional, and bilateral customs mutual administrative assistance and cooperation. Through drawing on the advanced experience and methods adopted by the international Customs community, China Customs has become more adaptive to the international Customs practices. China Customs is also exploring actively international cooperation in non-traditional fields and has implemented a series of pragmatic cooperation programs such as the “China-EU Pilot Project on Smart and Secure Trade Lanes”. Thanks to all those efforts, China Customs has seen a higher initiative of international cooperation, more extended fields of cooperation, much improved ability of cooperation and a higher status in the international Customs community. By far, China Customs has established friendly relations with Customs administrations of 117 countries and regions and signed 42 inter-governmental customs mutual assistance agreements.