As of August this year, six pilot free trade zones in Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangxi, Hebei, Yunnan, and Heilongjiang, and the Lingang New Area of Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone have been in operation for one year.
At a special press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce on September 2, Tang Wenhong, Director of the Free Trade Zone and Port Department of the Ministry of Commerce, stated that in the past year, all regions have focused on institutional innovation, based on their location characteristics, highlighted differentiated exploration, and strengthened the system. Integration, construction has achieved remarkable results.
Up to now, the average implementation rate of the 713 reform pilot tasks identified in the overall plan is close to 80%, which has initially achieved the goal of strengthening reform exploration on a larger scale, broader field, and deeper level, and better serves my country’s comprehensive opening-up strategy. layout.
Significant construction effect
Over the past year, six pilot free trade zones and the Lingang New Area of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone have carried out in-depth institutional innovations and achieved remarkable results, with construction highlights frequently appearing.
The innovation of the differentiated system is impressive.
Around the strategic positioning, all regions make full use of the advantages of location and resource endowment to carry out differentiated exploration.
For example, Shandong supported the establishment of the Shandong Industrial Technology Research Institute to promote the innovation of R&D systems and mechanisms. Less than a year after its establishment, it has gathered 87 high-level innovation teams, established 64 scientific research institutions, and transformed more than 200 cutting-edge technological achievements. Drive social investment over 20 billion yuan.
Industrial chain system innovation promotes industry agglomeration.
Localities have strengthened institutional innovation around the modern industrial system, accelerating the gathering of various innovative resources and key elements, giving full play to the role of stabilizing and strengthening the industrial supply chain.
For example, Jiangsu gives full play to the advantages of the biomedicine industry, and focuses on innovations in the field of biomedicine, such as mutual recognition of talent flow, product customs clearance, and industrial chain coordination, and has gathered a number of major technological innovation institutions and first-class biomedical companies.
Institutional innovation leads to continuous optimization of the business environment.
In the past year, the concepts of institutional innovation and open development have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people everywhere. Local governments have changed from "I want to change" to "I want to change." The awareness of actively grasping reform and development and the sense of urgency and mission of open innovation have been strengthened. The business environment is continuously optimized.
Seven provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have delegated a total of about 1,200 provincial-level administrative powers to the pilot free trade zones.
“In the next step, the Ministry of Commerce will continue to promote the establishment of high-quality pilot free trade zones, promote greater autonomy in reform and opening up, and form more targeted, effective, and integrated institutional innovations, and promote Deeper reforms, implementation of a higher level of opening up, leading the way in exploring the formation of a new development pattern with the domestic big cycle as the main body and the domestic and international double cycles mutually promoting each other, creating a new height for reform and opening up." Tang Wenhong said.
Explore the advantages
In response to the difficulties and obstacles that market players are concerned about, the major free trade pilot zones have combined their strategic positioning, location conditions, and industrial foundations, with institutional innovation as the core, and conducted in-depth differentiated explorations to form a synergistic effect.
Based on regional advantages, the Shandong Pilot Free Trade Zone will further promote the development of the marine economy and deepen the regional economic cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea.
Zhang Deping, director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Commerce, said that in terms of deepening regional economic cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea, the Shandong Pilot Free Trade Zone strives to create a major international logistics channel that "connects Japan and South Korea in the east and Europe and Asia in the west".
In the first seven months of this year, the "Qilu" Eurasian train opened 879 trains, an increase of 41.5% year-on-year, with a total import and export value of 7.2 billion yuan.
“The Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone has carried out active explorations in deepening cooperation with ASEAN, innovating border economic development, and unblocking new channels for international land and sea trade, and has initially formed a batch of innovative experiences with Guangxi characteristics.” Department of Commerce of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Chang Jiang Liansheng said, for example, actively exploring new models of cooperation with ASEAN, actively exploring new paths for economic development along the border, and actively exploring new measures to unblock new international land-sea trade channels.
Zhu Min, deputy director of the Shanghai Development and Reform Commission, said that the Lingang New Area of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has accelerated the exploration of the differentiation of open policies and systems, and accelerated the improvement of frontier industrial functions in key areas. The business environment has continued to optimize and the open system The system framework is initially formed.
At present, the Yangshan Port Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone, the only special comprehensive bonded zone in the country, has been closed and operated, and a new customs supervision model has been established, such as "first-line" clearance, no account books in the zone, and "second-line" import and export unilateral declaration.
Zhu Yimin, deputy director of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce, said that the Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone is accelerating to become the first choice for innovation and entrepreneurship, a gathering place for high-quality resources and an important growth pole for high-quality development.
In the next step, the Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone will further improve the policy support system, task list system, coordinated service system and industrial innovation system, etc., and accelerate the formation of more system innovation results that can be replicated and promoted.
“Hebei Pilot Free Trade Zone closely focuses on serving the major national strategy of coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and strives to test the system for the country and seek development for the local area. The reform and development tasks have achieved remarkable results.” The Deputy Director of the Hebei Provincial Department of Commerce quietly introduced. For example, the Hebei Xiong'an area is based on the construction of a financial innovation pioneer zone, actively exploring the supervision "sandbox mechanism", and the financial technology supervision innovation pilot project is progressing smoothly.
As my country's first pilot free trade zone in border areas, the construction of Yunnan and Heilongjiang pilot free trade zones has its own bright spots.
Kou Jie, deputy director of the Yunnan Provincial Department of Commerce, said that since the listing to the end of June this year, the number of incremental market entities in the Yunnan Pilot Free Trade Zone reached 31,559, and about 160 new market entities were born every day.
Wang Ping, deputy director of the Heilongjiang Provincial Department of Commerce, stated that the Heilongjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone actively releases the potential for opening up and cooperation with Russia and Northeast Asia to build a central hub for regional cooperation with Russia and Northeast Asia. Exports reached 57.71 billion yuan, accounting for 14% of the country’s total imports and exports to Russia.
Help foreign trade
"In the first seven months of this year, the six pilot free trade zones and Shanghai Lingang New Area actually utilized 13.11 billion yuan of foreign capital, and foreign trade imports and exports amounted to 660.76 billion yuan, accounting for 5.8% and 10.8% of the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities where they are located, respectively." Tang Wenhong said This shows that the free trade zone has played a positive role in stabilizing foreign capital and foreign trade.
Specifically, in terms of serving foreign trade and foreign-funded enterprises, the Qingdao area of Shandong has accelerated the construction of "international living rooms" such as Japan, and implemented a 144-hour visa-free transit policy for foreigners in certain countries at Qingdao port under the premise of preventing and controlling the epidemic.
The Heihe area of Heilongjiang takes advantage of cooperation with Russia, assists Chinese medicine import and export enterprises to resume work and production, and helps enterprises to import and export epidemic prevention materials through cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses.
In terms of supporting corporate financing facilitation, Lingang New Area took the lead in implementing innovative pilot projects such as one-off foreign debt registration and cross-border financing facilitation quotas for high-tech enterprises. The degree of facilitation of cross-border fund settlement and overseas financing was further improved, and financial institutions accelerated the gathering .
In terms of promoting trade facilitation, the Youyiguan Port in Chongzuo District of Guangxi has realized automatic release of various services such as port, bonded, and cross-border e-commerce at the same checkpoint, shortening customs clearance time by 80%, and reducing costs for enterprises by about 200 million yuan. The total import and export volume of Friendship Pass increased by 29.6% year-on-year.
The Honghe area of Yunnan Province has adopted the port logistics intelligent sorting system to enable the distribution and collection of reports to promote the transformation and upgrading of cross-border trade. In the first half of the year, Yunnan's exports to Vietnam increased by 41.8% year-on-year.
At present, the international situation is still complicated and severe, international trade and transnational investment will continue to be sluggish, and my country still faces challenges in stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment.
"I believe that with the in-depth advancement of system innovation in the pilot free trade zone and the continuous improvement of construction quality, it will make new contributions to stabilizing the basic market of foreign trade and foreign investment and building a higher level of open economic new system." Tang Wenhong said.
(Economic Daily-China Economic Net reporter Li Hualin)