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73 types of documents exist for shipments transported by air from / to China: 31 for import and 42 for export. What a challenge for the Chinese air freight industry to move to a paperless process! Currently, the Chinese supply chain, at every step, is solely depending on paper, but the willingness is there to enter the electronic era.

Due to the current Chinese customs decree, original paper master air waybill and flight manifest have to be presented with the customs declaration for clearance. IATA introduced the e-freight concept in China in 2009 and the major Chinese based carriers formed the Chinese e-freight working group (CEWG).

After extensive lobbying from IATA and the CEWG, China Central Customs agreed to run a pilot program in Tianjin airport (TSN). Tianjin airport became live for international e-freight in May 2010, with Samsung Telecommunication as the shipper. Samsung Shipments was sent from Tianjin to Frankfurt, Chinese Taipei and Amsterdam.

For each of those shipments transported as e-freight, Samsung Telecommunication was able to save 24-28 hours on export and 8 hours on import. Today, this first e-freight pilot airport is on hold and the associated process under review by China Central Customs. To move forward with e-freight in China, “an e-customs platform and the legal frame work need to be in place to support the validity of electronic declaration and clearance data” declared Chinese Customs. As a consequence, China Central Customs maintain their requirement for original paper documents for customs declarations and clearance procedure.

Looking forward to paper free

While the international e-freight process in China remains on hold, willingness to move to paper free continues. The CEWG realized that for domestic traffic within China, two documents (the master air waybill and the flight manifest) are produced with the shipments. The Chinese carriers therefore decided to first move to an electronic airway bill for their domestic shipments, before being able to implement the full e-freight process. Within three months, the first complete edition of the local message exchange standard and functional specification was produced (removing only the master air waybill and the Flight manifest). To date, 9 Chinese airports (*) and 13 domestic routes are live for domestic e-AWB with an average of 4000 shipments transported with an electronic air waybill every month!

China Cargo Airlines went even further with a daily domestic e-AWB flight from Shanghai airport (SHA) to Xi’an airport (XIY). Shenzhen airlines also operate a 100% domestic paperless flight from Shenzhen airport (SZX) to Wuxi airport (WUX).

*: the 9 Chinese airports live for domestic e-AWB are: CAN, WUH, DLC, SZX, HRB, URC, XIY, WUX, SHA