January 1, 2025, marks the third anniversary of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) coming into effect. Over the past three years, Qingdao Customs has issued 313,000 RCEP certificates of origin and certified over 10,000 self-declarations by approved exporters, leading the nation in both categories. These measures have supported exports worth 71.69 billion yuan with private businesses benefiting from more than 700 million yuan in tariff reductions from RCEP member countries.

As a landmark achievement in Asia-Pacific economic integration, the RCEP is the world's largest free trade agreement in terms of population, diversity of membership, economic scale, and growth potential. Over the past three years, the agreement has driven deeper regional economic and trade cooperation, improved resource allocation efficiency, and enhanced collaboration across industrial value chains. The integration of supply chains has accelerated, solidifying the region's emergence as an expansion of "the world's factory."

"Tariff concession is a key institutional achievement of the RCEP in goods trade and certificates of origin are essential for businesses to access these benefits," explained Director Bi Haijun of the Qingdao Customs Tariff Department. Qingdao Customs has been implementing a range of facilitation measures, aligning with RCEP requirements to help private enterprises lower costs, enhance efficiency, and expand their presence in overseas markets, thereby boosting the competitiveness of China's export products.

To address challenges such as the large number of origin certification entities and scattered management resources in Shandong, Qingdao Customs established a provincial-level certification of origin technical network to strengthen information exchange and management cooperation between customs and the trade and export promotion bodies. Qingdao Customs also pioneered mutual recognition of origin verification results and established a joint RCEP certificate approval center with local customs for the purpose of continuously enhancing the convenience for private businesses to access RCEP benefits.