Southwest China's Yunnan Province has continuously optimized its business environment and improved the level of opening-up to better serve as a key gateway to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and facilitate the upgrading of China-ASEAN economic cooperation.

Established in August 2019, the China (Yunnan) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ), covering parts of Kunming, the provincial capital, Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture and Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture, has implemented a series of innovative mechanisms to facilitate trade and investment into ASEAN.

"We used to pay more attention to the flow of economic factors and aim to realize global resource allocation and the flow of factors such as capital, technology, talent and product. After the Free Trade Zone was established, taking institutional innovation as the core, and ensuring it can be replicated and disseminated as the basic requirement, we strive to promote openness based on rules and institutions, and do well in bridging the inner circulation and the outer circulation," said Zhang Qiu, director of Institutional Innovation Department of Kunming Area of the FTZ.

In terms of cross-border logistics, the area offers systematic solutions across the entire chain by setting up a "cross-border logistics information and big data center."

An "one port, multiple paths" supervision mode has been created in the FTZ to include border paths into the range of port supervision, thus reducing traffic jams in the ports.

For example, the overall customs clearance time at Ruili Port in 2019 had been reduced by 7.3 hours compared with 2018.

In terms of cross-border finance, the FTZ has built a cross-border payment platform with setting up a non-cash cross-border payment service point in Myanmar, the first in the Southeast Asian nation.

Cross-border Chinese yuan settlement by banks in the FTZ reached 10.84 billion yuan (about 1.62 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2020, accounting for 40 percent of the province's total.

In terms of business environment and services, the FTZ has set up an "international law service complex," developed an innovative service mode for commercial arbitration, and established an international commercial arbitration and mediation service mechanism specially for Southeast Asia.

So far, the Yunnan's FTZ has made new progress in cross-border cooperation including finance, e-commerce, production capacity, industrial parks and logistics, and continuously injected impetus to economic and trade development of China and ASEAN.

The import and export trade volume between China and ASEAN in the first three quarters of this year reached 3.38 trillion yuan (about 500 billion U.S. dollars), hitting a new high, according to statistics released by the General Administration of Customs on Tuesday.