In China, ports of entry (POE) () are the lawful points of entry and exit from the country for freight and passengers. These include seaports, inland ports, airports, railway stations, and border crossings. POEs are created by the State Council or by provincial governments. They are legally distinct from transportation facilities; for example, the Tianjin Water Transport Port of Entry () is distinct from Tianjin Port ().

POE facilities perform customs and border control functions. They are generally located at transport terminals.

Classes of ports

According to the "Regulations of the State Council on Port of Entry Openings", ports of entry are categorized as either Class I or Class II. The "China Port of Entry Yearbook" uses these categories when identifying inbound and outbound inspection stations for freight, personnel, and vehicles.

Class I

Class I, or national-level, entry ports are established by national authorities. The State Council authorizes them after consultations with the province where the port is located and the People's Liberation Army (PLA). There are three types of Class I ports:

Sea, land, air, and passenger/cargo ports of entry that are open to foreign vessels, aircraft, vehicles, and other means of transportation. Most Class I ports belong to this category. Sea, land, air, passenger, and cargo ports of entry that only allow Chinese-flagged ships, aircraft, and vehicles to enter or leave the country (e.g. Luoyang Air Transportation Port of Entry in Henan Province and Zhongshan Water Transportation Port in Guangdong Province, which only allow Chinese aircraft and ships to enter or leave the country). As of 2016, there were no Class I land Ports of Entry with that limitation. Sea delivery points in China's territorial waters where foreign vessels are allowed to enter and exit (e.g., the Bozhong [Bohai Oil] Water Transport Port of Entry in Tianjin, which is the offshore oil delivery point for CNOOC Bohai Corporation).

The "13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Ports of Entry" specifies that certain passenger and cargo volume indicators three years after the opening of a Port of Entry will be used to determine the suitability of its status, and this status may be withdrawn.

+ PoE annual passenger and cargo targets Units Sea Inland River Border River Railway Road Coastal Airports Other Airports Cargo 1000 t 1000 200 50 100 50 30 30 Passengers 1000 - - 10 100 50 100 50

Class II

Class II, or "local-level", entry ports are created by local governments with the consent of the PLA and the provincial government after consulting local border inspection and examination units. Construction is financed locally. There are three types of Class II ports:

Loading and unloading points, points of departure, and transshipment points for foreign trade transportation by national vessels that rely on other ports of entry for border inspection and examination procedures. Ports for small-scale border trade and people-to-people exchanges agreed with the local governments of neighboring countries. Entry-exit points that are restricted to border residents only.

In the period of reform and opening, the various provincial governments of China approved the establishment of 331 Type II ports. On August 28, 1998: 46, the State Council issued the "Circular on Cleaning up and Rectifying Class II Ports" (State Circular No. 74), which intended to clean-up and rectify this proliferation of Type II Ports of Entry. The circular suspended the approval of class II ports, and proceeded to review the existing ones for their suitability as Ports of Entry. A total of 177 class II ports were closed, 57 class II ports were upgraded to class I ports, and 97 class II ports were merged with neighboring class I ports. This consolidation process is still ongoing.

Government bodies The basic structure of a port of entry includes 1) an integrated management system, 2) a supervision and inspection system, 3) an external transportation and external trade system; and 4) a service system. Generally, the number of units and departments working at a port of entry can reach about 40.

First, because of the different bureaucratic affiliations of the units at the port, it is necessary to have an integrated management organization to coordinate the relationship between the systems, which is usually a "port of entry management committee" (口岸管理委员会) or a "port of entry office" (口岸办公室) set up by the local government.

Second, the supervision and inspection system entails the management, supervision, and inspection of people, baggage, cargo, and means of transportation entering and leaving the country, and includes three subsystems: inspection (检查), testing (检验), and quarantine (检疫). As of 2024, the relevant agencies include

The National Immigration Administration for migration inspection. The General Administration of Customs is responsible for customs, excise, and duties; for contraband and prohibited goods interdiction; and for health, animal, and plant quarantine. The China Maritime Safety Administration is responsible for ship inspection and ship health certification. The China Civil Aviation Authority is responsible for airplane inspection. The State Administration for Market Regulation for commodity inspection, quality testing, and food testing. The Ministry of Agriculture for the fishing vessels registry (中华人民共和国渔业船舶检验局), and many other state organizations each with their own remits. Third, the external transportation system includes the actual transport institutions such as the management companies of the seaports, airports, railway stations, and other terminals and hubs; the shipping companies, airlines, transportation companies, logistics companies, and other enterprises involved in the transport of goods and people.

Finally, the service system includes banking, insurance, shipping agencies, supply, warehousing, seafarers' clubs, etc.。

The China Association of Ports-of-Entry (中国口岸协会 CAOP) is a national comprehensive association with independent legal personality, approved by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and supervised by the General Administration of Customs (GAC). The leading members of the association are composed of relevant personnel from the GAC, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Transport, China Railway, Civil Aviation Administration of China, plus other central departments and important local port of entry authorities. It serves as an organization for the exchange of port of entry information, business training, international cooperation, and the provision of consulting services, and also edits the China Port of Entry Yearbook.

History

The Ming and Qing dynasties, guided by the idea of "naval defense over commerce", had a long history of closed-door policies, closing ports, removing population from coastal areas, and forcing foreign traders into specific, limited ports (the Canton factories). This changed abruptly after the Opium War in 1840, when China was forced to open five ports of entry to foreign commerce: (Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai). As Western powers forced the opening of China in a succession of wars and unequal treaties, the number of treaty ports opened to the outside world increased to 35 by 1895. The idea of "commercial war", counterattacking the West commercial dominance, was put forward by thinkers such as Zheng Guanying in the 1870s, and began to be practiced in 1898, with the emergence of "self-opened commercial ports" The earliest self-opened commercial port in China was the port of Sandu'ao in Ningde, Fujian, followed by Qinhuangdao and Yuezhou. By the end of the Qing dynasty, there were 36 self-opened merchant ports spread throughout China, increasing to 52 in 1924, a number almost equal to the number of treaty ports:

The vagaries and hardships of the twentieth century meant that the number of open ports in China varied wildly as circumstances and governments changed. By 1978, there were only 51 ports of entry open to the outside world, including 18 water ports (17 on the coast and one on an inland waterway), eight air ports (seven international airports and one special airport), nine railroad ports, and 16 highway ports. Due to political reasons, most land ports were opened with socialist countries, and foreign trade was mainly in the form of barter and aid. In 1978, the volume of foreign trade goods entering and leaving the country through the Class I ports was 70.33 million tons, and the total value of import and export trade through the various types of ports was 20.64 billion US dollars, with 5,658,000 passengers entering and exiting the country, and a total of 325,000 ships, planes, trains, and cars.

After the start of the reform and opening, and especially after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour, the Chinese government started opening a new wave of ports; between 1978 and 1993, 150 new national ports were opened, 50 new ports were opened in 1992 and 1993 alone. By 1993, there were 201 Class I ports in China, including 117 water transport ports (65 coastal and 52 inland waterway ports), 46 air transport ports, 12 railroad ports and 35 highway ports, and all the province-level entities in China, except for landlocked Qinghai and Ningxia, had open ports. In 1993, the volume of foreign trade cargo in and out of the Class I ports amounted to 305 million tons, and the total amount of import and export trade through all kinds of ports was 195.72 billion U.S. dollars, 95.68 million passengers entering and leaving the country, and 8.989 million ships, planes, trains, and cars.

In 2006, the State Council approved the opening of Xining Caojiapu Airport in Qinghai province to international flights, which opened a port of entry into the last of the 31 provincial-level entities in China. The whole of China was now for the first time literally open to the world. By 2016, China had a total of 305 national-level ports of entry officially open to the public, including 137 water transport ports (82 coastal and 55 in inland waterways), 73 air transport ports, 20 railroad ports, and 75 highway ports. In 2016, the total value of imported and exported cargo at ports nationwide was US$3,685,557 million. The COVID-19 pandemic closed or restricted most of those ports, but on 8 January 2023, all mainland China ports that had been closed due to the pandemic were opened again.

List of national-level ports of entry

Highways As of 2016, the People's Republic of China had a total of 75 Class I highway PoEs, including 9 international ports of entry open to Hong Kong and Macao, and 64 international or bilateral ports to land-adjacent countries, in addition to 1 temporarily open PoE.

In 2016 statistics, the road port with the highest volume of import and export freight was Xinjiang's Khorgos Port of Entry, with an annual cargo volume of 25,575,568 tons, followed by Inner Mongolia's Ganq Mod Port of Entry with a cargo volume of 15,535,196 tons, and Guangdong's Huanggang Port, with a volume of 13,522,881 tons. The port with the largest number of passenger arrivals and departures was Gongbei Port in Guangdong, with 123,576,659 arrivals and departures per year, followed by Luohu Crossing in Guangdong with 81,231,123 arrivals and departures, and Shenzhen Bay Port also in Guangdong with 42,831,754 arrivals and departures; the port with the largest number of departures and arrivals among the ports not connected with Hong Kong and Macao was Ruili Port in Yunnan with 15,756,480 arrivals and departures, which was the fifth largest land port of entry overall in terms of number of arrivals and departures. The port with the largest number of inbound and outbound vehicles was Huanggang Port, with 8,452,162 vehicles, followed by Shenzhen Bay Port with 4,388,461 vehicles and Ruili Port with 3,975,104 vehicles.