China on Thursday officially opened
three new pilot free trade zones (FTZs) and expanded one as it seeks
greater opening-up and high-quality development. The
three new FTZs are in Beijing and the provinces of Anhui and Hunan,
increasing the total number of the country's FTZs to 21, while the
expanded one is in the coastal province of Zhejiang. The
launch came after the State Council on Monday issued a master plan to
outline the priorities for the three new pilot FTZs, and adopted a plan
to double the area of the pilot FTZ in Zhejiang. China's
decision to set up a new batch of pilot FTZs demonstrated the country's
firm determination to accelerate the formation of a new development
pattern through a higher level of opening-up, Vice Commerce Minister
Wang Shouwen said at a press briefing on Monday. Experts
believe that the new FTZs will further improve trade and investment
liberalization and facilitation in China through a new round of system
and mechanism reform and innovation. It will also grasp the strategic
opportunities brought about by the scientific and technological
revolution, and promote the transformation and upgrading of China's
foreign trade and the development of strategic emerging industries. Zhou
Mi, with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic
Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, said the new zones are a
supplement to the layout of the existing 18 pilot FTZs. "From the
coastal areas to the central inland regions, it shows that China hopes
to promote persified and higher-level opening-up," said Zhou. Experts
said the expansion of the FTZ is an effort to boost the development
momentum of the entire central region and further expand the entire
Chinese market, and therefore, foreign-funded enterprises will focus
more on the Chinese market in the future. Zhou
believes that the three new FTZs will attach greater importance to the
overall investment environment, seeking to meet more and higher demands
of foreign investors to realize coordinated development with local
companies and industries. "The new
step provides foreign-funded enterprises with good expectations for
China's continuous opening-up," Zhou said. "It also provides system
innovation and more experimental attempts which can effectively cut
investment costs and loosen investment restrictions." Xu
Xiangping, head of Hunan's commerce department, said the 21 FTZs cover
the eastern, central and western regions, and each one has its strategic
positioning and development goals. The
Beijing pilot FTZ will focus on supporting the construction of an
innovation center with global influence. It will accelerate the
construction of a leading area for the expansion of trade in services
and a pilot area for the digital economy. The
new pilot FTZ in Hunan will focus on building a world-class advanced
manufacturing cluster and an international investment and trade corridor
linking the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Guangdong-Hong
Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It will also be a leading area for in-depth
economic and trade cooperation between China and Africa. Expected
to set the standard for opening-up in the inland region, the pilot FTZ
in Anhui will focus on promoting the in-depth integration of scientific
and technological innovation and the development of the real economy. It
will accelerate the pace of its pioneering role in scientific and
technological innovation and the cluster development of advanced
manufacturing and strategic emerging industries, and promote the
integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta. The
expanded area in Zhejiang will focus on building a new type of
international trade center and a global shipping and logistics hub, as
well as the construction of a commodity resource allocation base
centered on oil and gas. It will also see the construction of a digital
economy development demonstration zone and a cluster area for advanced
manufacturing industries. FTZs are
the new high ground for China's reform and opening-up and an important
platform to absorb foreign capital. Seven years into China's pilot FTZ
mechanism, a total of 260 institutional innovations have been formulated
and replicated nationwide with remarkable results. In
the first seven months of 2020, more than 3,300 new foreign-funded
enterprises were established in the already existing 18 pilot FTZs.
These FTZs also reported an actual use of foreign investment of over 90
billion yuan (13.3 billion U.S. dollars) and contributed 2.7 trillion
yuan of foreign trade, accounting for 16.8 percent and 13.5 percent of
the country's total, respectively. Enditem
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