Five containers filled with international mail departed Chongqing to Europe through China Railway Express (Yuxinou) on October 26. Chongqing becomes China's key distribution center for international mail, especially Europe-bound. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the batch of international mail was detained in China in April. Knowing that China Post communicated with Chongqing's relevant authorities immediately. The first dedicated "China Post" China Railway Express train was launched to transport detained international mail.

"In addition to transporting international mail by train, we have reported 60 policy requests and empowerment suggestions in total," said Zhikui Zhang, Director of the Office of the Leading Group of China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ).

According to Zhang, Chongqing FTZ has made good use of reforming autonomy and played a good role as an "experimental field" to remove institutional barriers and meet market demands since inauguration in 2017.

Over the past three years, Chongqing FTZ has yielded fruitful innovation results with more than 240 new achievements. Notably, more than 50 were reported to the Office of the Inter-ministerial Joint Conference of the State Council, of which 56 were extended citywide, and inland logistics channel development, self-filing, self-determined write-off cycle, self-verification, self-reporting of overdue tax, and simplifying business approval procedures for special customs supervision zones, and other cases were extended nationwide.

Meanwhile, Chongqing FTZ has adhered to the approach of piloting and grown into a hub of Chongqing's open economy, making great contributions to the city's economic growth.

As of the end of July 2020, Chongqing FTZ had attracted 43,222 new enterprises with the combined registered capital reaching 516.7 billion yuan, and 3,037 new projects with combined contracts (agreements) totaling 953.3 billion yuan.

Over the past three years, Chongqing FTZ has become home to about one-fifth of Chongqing's total import and export enterprises, contributing about 70% to Chongqing's gross import-export value, and attracted over 40% of Chongqing's aggregate foreign direct investment.

In 2019 alone, Chongqing realized a foreign trade volume of 423.864 billion yuan, accounting for 73.2% of its total. It also earned 72.762 billion yuan in tax revenue, accounting for 17% of the city's total.

"Next, we will make an effort to build Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle and explore potential cooperation with Sichuan in free trade zone," said Zhang. "Especially, as we all know that Sichuan and Chongqing have reached a consensus on co-building the Co-opening-up Demonstration Zone of China (Sichuan) Pilot Free Trade Zone & China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone now."