Zhuhai placed 5th among China's Top 100 Foreign Trade Cities 2018, two rungs higher than 2017, according to a list recently published by China Customs magazine.

The list was compiled by the General Administration of Customs of the PRC (GACC) statistical department based on each city's total foreign trade value and 25 indicators under the categories of competitiveness in foreign trade, structure, performance, development, and potentials.

Zhuhai has been in the top 10 for several consecutive years since the inception of the list in 2008. It was just behind Shenzhen, Shanghai, Dongguan, and Suzhou last year.

The city's total foreign trade value was 324.6 billion yuan ($47 billion) in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 8.5 percent. Import value grew by 22.5 percent to 135.9 billion yuan.

Bustling Gaolan Port [Photo by Zhong Fan / Zhuhai Daily]

Since Zhuhai was designated a Comprehensive Cross-Border E-Commerce Pilot Zone last July, the sector has become a new economic force. Customs statistics showed that the city exported and imported more than 730,000 retail packages worth 170 million yuan in 2018, up 160 percent year-on-year.

Retaining the momentum, Zhuhai recorded 610,000 packages valued at 220 million yuan from January to June, a 26-fold increase year-on-year.

Meanwhile, Zhuhai also encourages the transformation and upgrade of enterprises, and development of the service outsourcing industry. The 2018 Global Service Outsourcing Summit held in the city secured seven projects worth over 1 billion yuan.

The city's executed amount of service outsourcing contracts increased by 8.47 times to $821 million in the first half of this year, surpassing Foshan and Dongguan for the first time to third place in Guangdong Province.

The optimized service outsourcing mode, improved foreign trade supply chain management, and booming international trade distribution businesses based on land-air combined transport between Zhuhai, Hong Kong, and Macao are expected to increase Zhuhai's foreign trade value by $1 billion this year.