The General Administration of Customs and Guangdong Province signed a cooperation memorandum in Beijing on Monday to build a demonstration region in Guangdong for upgrading the processing trade industry.

Upgrading the processing trade is essential to deepening China's opening-up and maintaining China's international competitive edge, and it is also the earnest need of Guangdong, said Wang Yang, chief of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Yu Guangzhou, minister of the General Administration of Customs, said innovations in customs management will be conducted in Guangdong to facilitate the operations of businesses.

The memorandum said innovative customs regulations will be applied in the demonstration region to encourage high-end equipment manufacturing in the region.