The special customs supervision areas of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone are born out of trade and flourish because of trade. The region's 13,000 trading firms conduct business with more than 200 countries and regions, generating 30 percent of the city's total imports and exports.

In recent years, offshore trade has become a new highlight of the areas' efforts to promote institutional innovation, with foreign exchange settlement up by 23.56 percent and the number of companies engaging in offshore trade accounting for 57 percent of the city's total.

Within the areas, the friendly offshore trade environment improves companies' capacity to allocate resources globally, which is based on the experience of business scale growth and trade model innovation in more than 300 company headquarters.

Breakthroughs have been made in both free trade account and foreign exchange account settlement, and corporations such as Samsung Semiconductor and Sony Electronics have become benchmarks in offshore trade in the areas.

In 2021, TradeNexus, China's first platform that uses offshore data to support trade authenticity audits was released. It has integrated customs declaration information of 17 countries and loading and unloading information of more than 30 major international ports, covering shipping company data for 60 percent of international container traffic.

Being at the forefront of reform and opening-up for more than 30 years, the areas now serve as national demonstration zones for promoting import trade innovation and developing special customs supervision areas.