BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up and the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Hainan special economic zone, Hainan has achieved a new breakthrough in the reform and opening-up, and will explore new-round reform and opening-up at a higher starting point and level.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council jointly released a guideline on supporting Hainan’s efforts to deepen reform and opening up on April 14. The guideline expressly proposed to build a pilot free trade zone across Hainan, and explore the policy of free trade port in line with Hainan's development orientations.
The guideline specified Hainan's four strategic orientations, containing pilot zone of comprehensively deepening reform and opening-up, national ecological civilization pilot zone, international tourism consumption center and service zone for major national strategies.
The guideline also included more than 20 specific measures for such purposes as constructing the modern economic system, promoting the formation of a new pattern for all-round opening, renovating the system and mechanism of promoting the construction of the international tourism consumption center, serving and integrating into major national strategies, strengthening and renovating social governance, speeding up the reform of the eco-civilization system, and perfecting the system of talent development and safeguard measures.
Remarkably, Hainan will become China's 12th and largest pilot free trade zone. Since the establishment of China's first pilot free trade zone in Shanghai in 2013, 11 such zones have emerged in China after two extensions, which has become "experimental fields" for comprehensively deepening reform and opening wider to the outside world.
According to the guideline, by 2020, major progress will be achieved in the construction of pilot free trade zones with Hainan's characteristics. Besides, efforts will be made to gradually explore and steadily advance the construction of Hainan free trade port, and establish the free trade port policy system by step and stage. By 2025, the free trade port system will take shape.
"The central government supported the construction of a free trade zone across Hainan, and exploring free trade port construction is a move to open up to the world at a higher level and advance institutional innovation to a greater extent," said Chi Fulin, President of the China Institute for Reform and Development, qouted by the Xinhua-run Economic Information Daily. In the future, with the innovative development of service trade as a major penetrating point, Hainan pilot free trade zone will speed up the opening of life service industries including tourism, medicine, health, education and culture, as well as the opening of producer service industries including finance, insurance and logistics, and at the same time advance institutional innovation according to the requirements of internationalization, marketization and legalization, to create a stable, fair, transparent and expectable business environment.
Currently the conditions for free trade port construction in Hainan are far beyond the comprehensive development level of other free trade zones in the world, said Chi, adding that the decision of the central government with that regard will create more market space for external capita and serves as a measure of China to initiatively open wider amid the rise of trade protectionism and unilateralism.
It is foreseeable that the tax exemption policy for the free trade port will bring about the free and fast flow of people, logistics and capital, derive various economic functions, and finally realized the leap-forward development of logistics, finance, insurance trade and other modern service industries, said Lin Jian, chairman of Hainan Harbor & Shipping Holding Co., Ltd.
Regarding the reform and opening-up policy for Hainan, the guideline specified that efforts should be made to implement a more open and convenient offshore duty-free shopping policy that covers all offshore passengers and will increase the quota of duty-free shopping.
"From airport to railway, and then full coverage, all offshore passengers will equally enjoy the offshore duty-free policy," said Wang Yalin, an official with Hainan’s Department of Finance. He expected that the policy would boost tourism and relevant industries in the province after its full coverage.
According to statistics, in the past six years since the offshore duty-free policy came into effect, Hainan's two offshore duty-free shops have registered a total of 30.589 billion yuan of duty-free sales and attracted 9.765 million shoppers as of the end of last year.
According to data, Hainan achieved 10.827 billion yuan of tourism revenue in February 2018, up 44.7 percent year on year. In 2017, Hainan achieved significant results in tourism construction, hosted 67.4501 million tourists throughout the year, up 12.0 percent year on year, and registered 81.199 billion yuan of total tourism revenue, up 20.8 percent year on year.
Analysts said that Hainan enjoys unique advantages in natural resources endowment, expecting that a new development opportunity will come for Hainan's tourism at the time point of the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening-up.
China implemented a high-level trade and investment liberalization policy in Hainan, Chi noted, adding that exploring the establishment of a free trade system with Chinese characteristics is a major policy proclamation and action of the Chinese government to initiatively open the Chinese market, which will play a positive impact on economic globalization.
As China's new-round of larger-scale, deeper-level and wider-range reform has started in Hainan, Hainan has given its strongest voice for the reform and opening-up of China and sounded the bugle for the country’s new-round reform and opening-up, said Fu Xuanchao, Director of the Hainan Development and Reform Commission, adding that Hainan should grasp the major development opportunity to shoulder its responsibility for the reform and opening-up of China. (Edited by Yang Yifan, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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