On Sept 6, the State Council announced new guidelines for promoting Special Customs Supervision Areas.

The guidelines, which set out core trends in the development of special customs supervision areas in the future, are aimed at integrating existing special customs supervision areas, optimizing policies and functions of government, as well as enhancing supervision and control.

The guidelines emphasize:

* Learning from the experience of free trade zones to trigger innovation in order to manage more effectively and stimulate enterprise vitality.

* Integrate existing types of special customs supervision areas while fully considering local conditions, support the establishment of bonded zones in middle and west regions of China as well as Northeast China.

* Promote the high-ended manufacturing industry, value added industry and optimize policies and functions of customs administrations to support diversified development.

* Strengthen goods supervision and management, and at the same time tighten verification of enterprise registrations to avoid blindly attracting investments.

* Integrate export processing zones, bonded logistics parks, cross-border industrial zones and bonded port areas into comprehensive bonded areas.

* Integrate functions, policies and management of customs departments to facilitate national enterprises to participate in international competition.

* Optimize industry structures, trade ways and services as well as supervision to help enterprises exert less effort to deal with local practices and avoid confusion.