Recently, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine ("AQSIQ") has released the Guiding Opinions on Promoting Reform and Innovation in Inspection and Quarantine to Further Support the Development of Pilot Free Trade Zones (FTZs) (the "Opinions").
The Opinions point out that a number of highly international, fairly creative and user-friendly reform measures will be formed by implementing supportive policies and piloting and exploring innovative systems in FTZs, with a view to dramatically increasing the degree of trade facilitation in FTZs and providing experience for the in-depth reform and innovation in inspection and quarantine in all aspects. To this end, the Opinions list four measures, including "making further progress in pilot programs and exploration and pushing ahead the policy of streamlining administration, delegating powers and improving regulation and services". In particular, the Opinions clearly state that it is supported to set up windows for the inspection and quarantine purposes at all comprehensive service halls for FTZs, adopt the "acceptance via one window" service mode for administrative approvals, and make administrative approvals better regulated and standardized. For FTZ-based enterprises that are associated with special articles, the administrative approval will be paperless throughout the entire process for special biomedicine-type articles entering and leaving the territory of China; for enterprises in good faith, their Class D biological products leaving the territory of China will be subject to a more efficient approval process, based on the grading of products and the classification of enterprises.