Convenient Transprotation

Shenzhen has land, sea and air checkpoints. Checkpoints in Shenzhen have the largest flow of people and goods in China.

Checkpoints

Shenzhen has 17 checkpoints. Luohu Checkpoint is China's busiest land passenger checkpoint, while Shenzhen Bay Checkpoint is the busiest land cargo checkpoint.

Customs

Shenzhen Customs is under the direct leadership of the General Administration of Customs of China. Shenzhen and Huizhou are both under the jurisdiction of Shenzhen Customs, which is also one of China's busiest customs agencies. It provides around-the-clock customs declarations for enterprises.

In 2010, 198 million people and 15.71 million vehicles crossed the border through Shenzhen checkpoints.

Shipping

By the end of 2010, Shenzhen Port has been home to 176 berths, with 69 capable of accommodating vessels above 10,000 tons and 44 for container ships.

In 2010, Shenzhen Port handled 220 million tons of cargo, up 15.59 percent from 2009. The container throughput rose 23.1 percent to reach 22.51 million TEUs, ranking fourth in the world for the eighth consecutive year.

A total of 230 international container routes go through Shenzhen, with 60 to America, 57 to Europe, 14 to Africa, seven to Australia, and 92 to other Asian cities. In 2010, about 24,353 container ships stopped over in Shenzhen.

Civil Aviation

Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport is a first-class civil airport and has become one of the country's four busiest airports. It operates 130 air routes. The number of passengers passing through the airport totaled 26.71 million in 2010. It handled 809,000 tons of cargo last year.

Railway Network

Shenzhen has an extensive railway network. Two arterial railways cutting across the Chinese continent, the Beijing-Guangzhou railway and the Beijing-Kowloon railway, meet in Shenzhen. A total of 166 pairs of trains commute between Shenzhen and Guangzhou, of which 110 pairs are express passenger trains. The Harmony Express runs at 5-minute intervals between Shenzhen and Guangzhou in peak hours. In terms of long-distance transportation, Shenzhen has regular train services to Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou, Guilin, Jiujiang, Wuchang, Yueyang, Zhengzhou, Changde, Xi'an and Shengyang.

Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Kong Kong Railway and Xiamen-Shenzhen Railway are under construction. The Shenzhen section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Kong Kong Railway is expected to start operation in August 2011. The Shenzhen North Railway Station in Longhua Subdistrict, which started operation in June 2011, is expected to become a regional rail transport hub in southern China.

Shenzhen Metro

Phase I of the Shenzhen Metro was opened on Dec. 28, 2004. In June 2011, all the five lines included in Phase II of the Shenzhen Metro were opened, forming a 178-km Metro network. In 2010, Shenzhen Metro transported 163 million people, or 446,000 each day.

Road Network

Roads and expressways in Shenzhen form a network that connects the rest of the Pearl River Delta region.

By the end of 2010, Shenzhen had opened long-distance buses to all major counties and cities in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao and more than 20 provinces and regions in China. Shenzhen will play a bigger role as a road transport hub in the Pan-Pearl River Delta area with the integration of Delta cities and the expansion of the expressway network.

Bus transportation

In November 2010, Shenzhen signed an agreement with the Ministry of Transport to build Shenzhen into an exemplary city for public transport. By the end of 2010, the city had 12,500 public buses on 756 routes. Public buses were used by 2.44 billion people in 2010.

Fast developing economy

Shenzhen is among the top mainland cities for economic returns.

Economic Growth

In 2010, Shenzhen's economy maintained a healthy momentum of development. GDP grew by 12 percent to 951.09 billion yuan, and the total retail sales of consumer goods increased by 17.2 percent to 300.08 billion yuan. The foreign trade volume increased 28.4 percent to US$346.75 billion. The export volume increased 26.1 percent to US$204.18 billion, ranking first among the nation's large and medium-sized cities for the 18th consecutive year.

Economic Power

Shenzhen is fourth on the Chinese mainland in terms of economic power and one of the cities that has generated the biggest economic returns.

Shenzhen was second in an economic performance listing by the Brookings Institute and the LSE Cities. The Global Metro Monitor report published in November 2010, which examined data on economic output and employment in 150 of the world's largest metropolitan economies, showed that Shenzhen's economic performance was second in the world and first in China.

Fiscal Revenue

Shenzhen reported 110.68 billion yuan in local revenue in 2010, up 25.7 percent compared with the previous year.

Economic Status

Shenzhen is a link between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and a transport hub in coastal southern China. The city leads in high-tech, financial services, foreign trade, shipping and creative cultural industries. It has undertaken a mission to pilot China's structural reform and a broader opening to the outside world.

Beautiful environment

About half of Shenzhen's total area is within a nature protection area demarcation line for suburban parks. Forests cover 39.7 percent of the total land.

Environmental Protection

In 2010, the city's air quality reached Level 2 of the national standard. A total of 356 days were rated as "good" or "basically good." Drinking water quality reached the national standard. Standards were met for 100 percent of the drinking water in the city's major reservoirs. The non-hazardous treatment rate of urban waste was 94.6 percent.

Shenzhen has built a comparatively complete system to monitor environmental quality and sources of pollution. There are 29 stations automatically monitoring air, water and noise polluters at present. The city's online monitoring system has included 551 enterprises and 252 sites.

The city is speeding up the construction of China's pilot ecological city and a model city of low-carbon living. The world's first batch of electric taxis hit the streets in Shenzhen in 2010.

Ecological Garden City

Shenzhen, dubbed City of Parks, has a pleasant natural environment. It has 683 parks totaling 20,541 hectares. The urban greenbelt coverage in developed areas is 45.04 percent.

Nature reserves cover 30.65 percent of the city area. The area within the ecological protection line, 974 square kilometers in total, is under effective protection.

Shenzhen has won awards from domestic and overseas authorities, which include Nations in Bloom, UNEP's Global Top 500 Laureate Roll of Honor, National Hygienic City, National Model City for Environmental Protection, Model City for Protection of Ozone Layer, National Greenery Model City and National Brilliant Tourism City.

Greenway

In June 2010, Shenzhen launched a plan to build a greenway network. According to the plan Shenzhen will build a network of greenways totaling 2,000 kilometers in length, and residents will have access to a greenway within five minutes' walk. By the end of 2010, 335 kilometers of greenway had been completed and opened to the public.

Perfect infrastructure

Futian Free Trade Zone, Shatoujiao Free Trade Zone, and the southern part of
Yantian port Free Trade Zone have all completed such engineering as land levelling,
road construction, water supply, electricity supply, post and telecommunications, drainage, etc.

With all the perfect supporting facilities, the zones become a mature investment environment.

Free trade policies

Cargos transported from outside the boundary into the free trade zone or transported from the free trade zone outside the boundary are free of customs duties and licenses, and the customs carries out the archiving systhem management;Cargos transported into domestic non-free trade zone from the free trade zone are regarded as imports, while cargos transported into the free trade zone from the domestic non-free trade zone are regarede as exports.

The customs carries out customs declaration management, In the free trade zone, such businesses as manufacturing, processing, warehousing, exhibition and trade are allowed.

Investors pooling up

The three free trade zones in Shenzhen have attracted a remarkable number of investors from 25 countries and regions all over the world, among which are a lot of world-renowned multinational enterprises.