Containers at the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai [Photo/VCG]

In the World Bank's Doing Business 2020 report, China's trading across borders index rose from 65th place in 2019 to 56th, with Shanghai ranking fifth among the world's maritime economies in terms of cross-border trade facilitation.

The implementation of single window operations in Shanghai international trade was one of the most important scoring points in the World Bank's evaluation. It is also the "Shanghai service" that the World Bank praised and recommended to the world.

The single window of Shanghai international trade has formed 10 functional blocks with the characteristics of supervision and service, and 53 local applications. A total of 22 relevant departments have entered the single window system, serving more than 40,000 enterprises in Shanghai and nearly 300,000 import and export enterprises in China.

The single window not only solves the problems of declaration of goods, declaration of means of transport, and handling of licenses required by enterprises for customs declarations at ports, but also realizes many local featured service functions, according to Shen Weihua, deputy head of Shanghai Commission of Commerce.

In 2020, the single window will build a trinity of business service structure with "standard functions, special services, application market", further achieving "customs clearance + logistics + charges" on the basis of "customs clearance + logistics", realizing the visualization, traceability and operation of cross-border trade time and cost, Shen added.