Beijing Youth Daily:
The Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics will open soon. What services and guarantees does the customs system provide for the smooth running of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics? Thank you.
Li Kuiwen:
Thank you for your question. The Beijing Winter Olympics is a major landmark event at an important historical time in China. The GACC resolutely implements the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions on the COVID-19 prevention and control at ports and the preparation for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, strengthens supervision, and optimizes services. We will unremittingly implement port pandemic prevention and control in a scientific and targeted manner, ensure high-quality and efficient services for the health quarantine of inbound personnel, and carry out material customs clearance for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The GACC will make due contributions to safeguarding the security of the Chinese capital city and ensuring the smooth holding of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Our work is mainly as follows:
First, we will implement port pandemic prevention and control in a scientific and targeted manner and provide services for the arrival and departure of Olympic-related personnel while resolutely curbing the spread of the pandemic through the port. We will strengthen communication with the arrival and departure center of the Beijing 2022 organizing committee and other departments, learn about the information of inbound and outbound personnel in advance, continue to refine the customs clearance guarantee plan, and implement the "one flight, one policy" for all Winter Olympics-related flights so as to achieve strict supervision, targeted quarantine, and efficient services. For example, in order to reduce the time people stay at the port, we have specifically compiled the Instructions for Health Declaration of Inbound Winter Olympics Charter Flights and translated it into multiple languages so that Olympic-related personnel can fill in health declaration cards in advance before boarding. The efficiency of customs clearance will then be improved. In accordance with the requirement that "the prescribed routines must be done 100%; even the 99% is unqualified," we strictly standardize all measures in aspects of health declaration card verification, temperature monitoring, medical inspection, sampling and testing, handover and transfer, and information reporting for inbound personnel. We have paid close attention to the pandemic prevention and control work at the port and resolutely curb the spread of the pandemic through the port. As of Jan. 10, 2022, Beijing customs has monitored and handled a total of 196 Olympic-related flights, involving 5,958 Olympic-related personnel.
Second, we continue to optimize our services to ensure the efficient customs clearance of the Winter Olympics materials. We have issued the Notice on Customs Clearance for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Winter Paralympic Games in advance to provide detailed guidelines for inbound and outbound materials and personnel for the Winter Olympics in eight aspects, including information registration and filing, tax guarantees for temporarily imported materials, pre-entry filing and approval, customs clearance of imported materials, supervision of personnel and personal items, and customs clearance of journalists' interview equipment. At the same time, we have set up special customs channels and special windows for inbound and outbound Winter Olympics materials and personnel, relied on the Winter Olympics' paperless customs clearance management system to simplify the declaration, and implemented the "5+2" (5 working days + 2 weekend days) reservation clearance system in order to ensure that Winter Olympics materials are available for inspection 24 hours a day. In addition, we have worked hard to supervise imported food related to the Olympics and ensure the safe and smooth supply of imported food for the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics. As of Jan. 10, 2022, Beijing customs has monitored, handled, inspected, and released 637 shipments of inbound materials for the Winter Olympics, with a value of approximately 1.499 billion yuan.
Third, we strengthen investment in technology and personnel to provide strong support for the Winter Olympics with high-quality and efficient customs supervision services. Beijing customs, as the competent customs office for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics, has been promoting the transformation of the special achievements of the high-tech Winter Olympics. It has deployed and applied 10 kinds of equipment and facilities such as the nuclear radiation holographic positioning system, universal disinfection cabinets, trace odor detectors, and intelligent inspection robots at the port, in a bid to improve the intelligence and informatization level of supervision and clearance for the Winter Olympics. Beijing customs keeps improving the "horizontal + vertical" human resources echelon working mechanism. It has established a support echelon, including more than 1,000 front-line and reserve personnel and more than 400 emergency support personnel, to provide all-around backup support for Olympic-related personnel during the peak period for their entry, according to the actual needs of the Winter Olympics customs clearance work. Thank you.
