Hainan realizing prosperity with free port

"Looking back at the past 10 years, the main theme behind Hainan's development has been comprehensively deepening reform and opening-up, and the primary highlight is the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port," Shen Xiaoming, secretary of the Hainan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said at a recent news conference in Haikou, the provincial capital, while discussing the province's socioeconomic achievements.

Building the Hainan FTP is a major national strategy that has been planned, deployed and promoted by President Xi Jinping, with the goals of making Hainan a paradigm of reform and opening-up in the new era of China's development and building a community with a shared future for humankind, government officials said.

Hainan, a node connecting China with Southeast Asia, is hastening to ensure high-quality development and make the Hainan FTP a model for China's reform and opening-up policy in the new era, said Shen, the top provincial official.

He said the implementation of the Hainan Free Trade Port Law and more than 180 policies since 2018 have together established a free trade port system that is characterized by "zero tariffs, a low tax rate and a simple tax system" and promotes the free and convenient flow of trade, investment, cross-border capital and personnel, as well as the safe and orderly flow of data.

Hainan has completed 123 institutional integration innovations in fields such as commercial registration, foreign investment management and trade supervision. The significant headway made has facilitated a more open, convenient and efficient business environment for traders and investors, local officials said.

Last year, the policy incentives and institutional innovations prompted Hainan's economy to grow by 11.2 percent year-on-year, the highest growth rate among all provincial regions in China, while its annual GDP rose from 285.5 billion ($42.3 billion) in 2012 to 647.5 billion, according to data from the provincial government. By June, registered business entities had jumped to 1.98 million, from 420,000 in 2012, the data showed.