According to Shanghai Customs, Shanghai's total imports and exports reached 2.15 trillion yuan ($300.17 billion) in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 2.4 percent.

In the same period, the imports and exports of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone exceeded 1.1 trillion yuan, accounting for one quarter of the total among free trade zones nationwide.

A panoramic view of the Pudong New Area, where the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone is located. [Photo/CHINA DAILY]

Shanghai Customs has succeeded in building a national security barrier, empowering industrial development, expanding openness, and benefitting people's lives through intelligent means.

Focusing on biosafety and invasive species prevention, Shanghai Customs has used smart tech to strengthen risk control. Facing a massive passenger flow at airports, it pioneered an intelligent model to predict the risk of epidemics, which uses multi-source data to pinpoint disease risk, ensuring quick, hassle-free clearance for most travelers while maintaining security.

Shanghai Customs has also innovated regulatory models for key industries like biopharmaceuticals, integrated circuits, and high-end equipment manufacturing. For instance, in biopharmaceuticals, it has adopted "embedded supervision" for CAR-T cell therapy, a novel cancer treatment, creating tailored, rapid clearance plans for the first batch of CAR-T drugs, enabling overseas patient samples to clear customs in just four hours and helping firms seize global market opportunities.

Through strategies like upgrading the free trade zone and developing the Shanghai Eastern Hub International Business Cooperation Zone, Shanghai Customs has elevated institutional openness. It has expanded its expedited clearance policy to ports like Waigaoqiao and Pudong Airport, boosting logistics efficiency; supported green shipping by overseeing 384,000 cubic meters of bonded liquefied natural gas and 33,000 metric tons of bonded green methanol refueling; and facilitated bonded remanufacturing, with China's first off-zone bonded remanufacturing business landing in Shanghai.

Regarding daily necessities, Shanghai Customs has pioneered a "whitelist + differentiated conformity assessment" model, enabling fast, inspection-free entry or swift clearance based on accredited lab reports for new international products.