Officials from the China-bordering province of Quang Ninh and China’s Guangxi province have sought to combat cross-border smuggling to create a healthy environment for investment and trade in their border-gate areas.

At their talks in China’s Nanning city on December 24 on the sidelines of the sixth meeting of the two countries’ joint-working committee, they agreed to intensify the sharing of information and coordination to make the fight against smuggling highly efficient.

Greater efforts against smuggling and fake goods are being made in border localities across Vietnam, especially when the Lunar New Year (Tet) festival, the country’s biggest festive time of the year, is approaching.

The northeastern coastal province of Quang Ninh, contiguous to Red River Delta provinces and the Gulf of Tonkin to the east, has a long common borderline of 132.8 km with Dongxing city and Fangcheng county in the Chinese province of Guangxi, creating a system of bustling border gates including Mong Cai, Bac Phong Sinh and Hoanh Mo.

Located in a strategic position in terms of politics, business, and military, the province can connect with Hai Phong city to establish an international seaport cluster, with Hanoi and other localities to create a regional transit route to ship Vietnamese commodities to international markets, especially the Northeast and Southeast Asian regions.

The locality is also part of the “two corridors, one belt” economic cooperation between Vietnam and China, the Pan-Tonkin Gulf economic cooperation, the bridge between ASEAN and China and the Nanning-Singapore Economic Corridor.

The province has seen an average GDP growth rate of over 10 percent for the last 20 years and its GDP per capita is 2,910 USD, a 1.7-fold increase against that of the national average in 2012.-VNA