Ningbo Customs officials conduct inspections of export goods within a special supervision zone for cross-border e-commerce. [Photo by Zhu Jiana/Tide News]

Ningbo has taken the national lead in facilitating cross-border e-commerce exports through special customs supervision zones, with total exports reaching 1.52 billion yuan ($220.61 million) from January to February, up 87.5 percent year-on-year, according to Ningbo Customs.

Inside warehouses operated by logistics firms, parcels are efficiently sorted, stored, and processed. Goods can now be declared, inspected, and loaded onto containers within the bonded zone before being shipped overseas. This streamlined workflow has reduced average customs clearance time from three days to less than one, ensuring shipments are able to meet tight schedules.

Ningbo-Zhoushan Port's Meishan Port Area handled 2.41 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in January and February, a year-on-year increase of 18.44 percent. In response to surging cargo volumes, customs authorities have introduced a tiered clearance system, enabling differentiated inspections based on risk levels and boosting checkpoint efficiency by 25 percent.

Leveraging the zone-port integration model, customs now synchronizes release data between port and bonded-zone checkpoints. Hardware upgrades and enhanced image-recognition technology have raised vehicle and container identification accuracy, cutting average crossing time from 30 seconds to about 10.