Over the 70 years since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Xiamen in East China's Fujian province has transformed from a closed coastal defence city into an important foreign trade port.

The recently concluded China International Fair for Investment and Trade, or CIFIT, is a perfect example of how open Xiamen has become, as the event welcomed more than 100,000 businesspeople from over 130 countries and regions in 2019.

In 2001, when China first joined the World Trade Organization, Xiamen was finally able to engage in foreign trade and began testing the waters of foreign investment. In 2008 and 2010, the city's imports and exports exceeded $40 billion and $50 billion respectively.

The utilization of foreign capital in Xiamen increased significantly from an annual average of a few tens of millions of dollars in the 1980s to the current more than $2 billion.

Statistics show that as of 2018, Xiamen had approved a total of 14,818 foreign-funded projects with contractual foreign capital of $66.04 billion and actual use of foreign capital of $37.87 billion.

The port city also rolled out a series of polices to reduce customs clearance time and cut down on government fees in a bid to boost foreign trade.

According to Xiamen Customs, in June 2019 the average import and export clearance time at Xiamen Port was 44.76 hours and 4.45 hours respectively, down 59.2 percent and 80.2 percent over the same period in 2017.

In 2018, 220 million tons of cargo was delivered at Xiamen Port, a 115.3-fold increase from 1981 and an average annual increase of 13.7 percent.

Moreover, the city has launched 10 intercontinental airlines with routes to Europe, America and Australia, as well as six Xiamen-Europe rail lines connecting more than 30 cities in 12 countries. Sea-railway combined transportation in the city has routes to Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea.

The China International Fair for Investment and Trade, or CIFIT, is a perfect example of how open Xiamen has become, welcoming more than 100,000 businesspeople from over 130 countries and regions in 2019. [Photo/WeChat account: xm_swj]