On May 14, Li Zhihui, deputy director of the Free Trade Zone & Special Regional Development Department under China’s General Administration of Customs, led a research team to study how to accelerate the development of export-oriented economy in Yichang, where the team was met by Zhou Ji, secretary of the Municipal Party Committee.

　　Zhou Ji, on behalf of the Municipal Party Committee, the municipal government and the whole city, welcomed the research team and gave a brief introduction of the relevant economic and social development in Yichang. He said that Yichang, as a city with the largest installed hydropower capacity in the world, has always attached great importance to its development and opening to the outside world, and has cultivated a number of advanced enterprises with globe-leading industry scale and technology through implementing a series of opening-up measures. At present, Yichang is thoroughly studying and implementing the spirit of the important speech made by General Secretary Xi Jinping during his visit to Hubei, and accelerating the construction of Yichang into a national regional central city by seizing such important opportunities as “the Belt and Road Initiative" and the construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, conforming to the trend of China’s progressive development from east to west and from coast to inland, and actively docking with Chongqing and Wuhan, two national central cities. It is hoped that the General Administration of Customs and Wuhan Customs will give greater support to the construction of Yichang’s Free Trade Zone, the Comprehensive Bonded Zone and the Three Gorges over-dam transshipment system, so as to help Yichang develop her export-oriented economy, grow into an opening-up inland highland, and strive to play a greater role in China’s development of a higher-level open economy and in the promotion of high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

　　Li Zhihui said that Yichang attaches great importance to its development and opening up to the outside world, and has made initial achievements in its active promotion of the construction of the Free Trade Zone, and in its all-out efforts to apply for the construction of Comprehensive Bonded Area. The General Administration of Customs will give full play to its functions, further increase its support for the construction of the Free Trade Zone and the application and construction of the Comprehensive Bonded Area, and make new and greater contribution to the better and faster development of Hubei and Yichang’s export-oriented economy.

　　The team inspected Yichang Comprehensive Protection Zone, Three Gorges Bonded Logistics Center, Baiyanggang Customs Supervision Office and the office of Yichang Customs successively and listened to reports on the development of the city’s open economy and the application for the construction of Yichang Comprehensive Bonded Area.

　　Other people who joined the research team or attended the meeting include Yang Jie, Director of Wuhan Customs, Yuan Weidong, Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee of Politics and Law, Liu Jianxin, member of the Standing Committee and Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee, Zhang Peng, Deputy Mayor, and Wang Yuancheng, Director of the Administrative Committee of Yichang Economic and Technological Development Zone. (Reporters: Lei Pengcheng and Pi Yajie)