Xinjiang's fruits make inaugural journey on express trucks to central Asian market

Several express trucks carrying fresh fruits on Saturday started a journey from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, making a direct trip to Almaty, Kazakhstan, capitalizing on the expedited customs clearance privileges.

This express line employs high-performance large trucks for seamless cross-border transportation of goods. In accordance with the "International Convention on the Harmonization of Frontier Controls of Goods" guidelines, the goods on the trucks can be dispatched from the originating warehouse and delivered to the destination warehouse without customs inspections or container openings along the route, thereby significantly reducing clearance time and transportation costs.

In this mode, customs officials handle the consolidation, loading, and inspection procedures for the exported produce at a fruit and vegetable wholesale market located in Xinjiang. Once these vehicles reach the Horgos Port, a major border junction in Xinjiang connecting China and Central Asia, they can proceed directly to Kazakhstan without further delays.

This streamlined and efficient cross-border transportation process means much lower cost for exporters.

"For our merchants, this is a significant advantage as it reduces transportation time. Previously, going through the port procedures would add an extra day to the transit. But the express trucking mode saves a day of transportation time and eliminates the need for two transshipments. Merchants can now complete all relevant customs procedures here in one go, providing them with great convenience and benefiting their business tremendously," said Zhou Kai, person in charge of the wholesale market for agricultural products.

In the past, the transportation process of exporting fruits and vegetables from key markets in Xinjiang to Central Asia involved transporting the goods to ports for inspection and customs clearance. This procedure not only consumed a significant amount of time but also led to substantial losses of perishable produce.

However, the fresh customs clearance mode is now establishing a door-to-door transportation system with Central Asian countries. This streamlined approach has reduced the transportation time sharply by more than 50 percent, while also minimizing goods loss by around 3 percent.

Xinjiang's fruits make inaugural journey on express trucks to central Asian market

Xinjiang's fruits make inaugural journey on express trucks to central Asian market

The United Nations Security Council has called on Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza, where food supplies are dwindling and the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.

Addressing an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Gaza's worsening humanitarian crisis on Tuesday, Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the humanitarian situation in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly amid an Israeli blockade that has prevented the entry of food, medicine, water and shelter materials for more than 10 weeks.

"We have life-saving supplies ready, now, at the borders. We can save hundreds of thousands of survivors. We have rigorous mechanisms to ensure our aid gets to civilians, and not to Hamas. But Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians," he told the security council.

According to Fletcher, some 70 percent of Gaza's territory is either under displacement orders or within Israeli-militarized zones, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in shrinking areas without basic necessities.

Every single one of the 2.1 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face the risk of famine. One in five face starvation, Fletcher said, quoting a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Israel blocked the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza on March 2, following the end of the first phase of a January ceasefire deal with Hamas. It resumed attacks on Gaza on March 18, with at least 2,720 Palestinians killed since then.

Fletcher described an Israeli plan for aid distribution in the Gaza Strip as a "a fig leaf for further violence and the displacement" of Palestinians in the enclave.

"The Israeli-designed distribution modality is not the answer. It practically excludes many, including people with disabilities, women, children, the elderly, the wounded. It forces further displacement. It exposes thousands of people to harm. It sets an unacceptable precedent for aid delivery, not just in the OPT (the Occupied Palestinian Territory), but around the world. It restricts aid to only one part of Gaza while leaving other dire needs unmet. It makes aid conditional on political and military aims. It makes starvation a bargaining chip," he said.

UN Security Council urges Israel to lift Gaza aid blockade amid famine warnings