General

This year marks the fifth anniversary of China's announcement of the construction of Hainan Free Trade Port. Over the past five years, the average annual growth rate of Hainan's international trade imports and exports has reached 23.4%, and the annual import and export value has continuously exceeded 100 billion yuan and 200 billion yuan. In the first quarter of this year, Hainan's foreign trade steadily improved, with an import and export volume of 57.74 billion yuan, reaching a new historical high of 32.5% year-on-year. Hainan's foreign trade development has entered a "fast lane".

Li Shijie, president of the open economy Research Institute of Hainan Province, said in an interview that Hainan's foreign trade growth has achieved a historic leap; At the same time, it also shows a strong development momentum of service trade. Over the past five years, the scale of service trade has increased by 1.2 times, gradually increasing its contribution to foreign trade growth; Hainan's new offshore international trade is rapidly developing, and the free trade port promotes the facilitation of cross-border trade in goods, service trade, and new international trade settlement, achieving the transformation of bank authenticity review from pre review to post verification, providing policy support for the development of new offshore trade. As of the end of 2022, Hainan's new offshore international trade revenue and expenditure related to foreign affairs reached 18.45 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 1.5 times.

In the past five years, Hainan has further expanded its economic and trade ties with various global economies, with the number of trading partners increasing from nearly 160 countries and regions in 2018 to nearly 180 in 2022. The average annual growth rate of Hainan's international trade imports and exports to major trading partners such as the European Union, Japan, and Brazil exceeded the overall growth rate of Hainan's foreign trade by 17.6, 5.9, and 33.2 percentage points, respectively. In 2022, the import and export volume of goods between Hainan and RCEP member countries reached 71.18 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.7%.

The implementation of a series of favorable policies for Hainan Free Trade Port has taken effect, driving the high-quality development of Hainan's foreign trade. Cai Zhenwei, Deputy Director of the Hainan Free Trade Port Research Center of the South China Sea Research Institute, said that the Hainan Free Trade Port seized the opportunity of RCEP and successively released the "20 Action Plans for Implementing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) in Hainan Province", as well as the "List of Hainan's Export Advantage Products under RCEP", "List of Hainan's Import Advantage Products under RCEP", and the "List of Hainan Free Trade Port's" Zero Tariff "Advantage Products" and "Three Lists", Assist enterprises in further exploring the benefits of RCEP tariff reduction, and fully utilize the synergistic effect of RCEP and Hainan Free Trade Port policies.

Li Shijie said that "zero tariff" is an important system design for Hainan Free Trade Port. The first "zero tariff" list was implemented on December 1, 2020. Currently, Hainan Free Trade Port has implemented three "zero tariff" lists, namely the positive list of "zero tariff" for imported raw materials, the positive list of "zero tariff" for imported transportation vehicles and yachts, and the negative list of "zero tariff" for imported self use production equipment, This has a great promoting effect on attracting imports. According to statistics from Haikou Customs, as of January 31, 2023, the cumulative import value under the "zero tariff" policy was 15.456 billion yuan, with a tax reduction of 2.726 billion yuan. Enjoy benefits products involve self use production equipment, transportation tools, yachts, raw materials, etc.

At the same time, the number of foreign trade operators in Hainan has doubled. The number of successful import and export enterprises in Hainan has increased from nearly 600 in 2018 to over 1500 in 2022. Among them, private enterprises have become the main force in the growth of Hainan's foreign trade, accounting for nearly 20% of Hainan's foreign trade in 2018 to nearly 50% in 2022. The proportion has further increased to 54.9% in the first quarter of this year.

In recent years, Hainan has continuously optimized its business environment and created favorable development conditions and growth environment for enterprises. The construction of a free trade port has broad prospects, and private entrepreneurs are full of expectations for the closure and operation of Hainan's free trade port. Therefore, they have come to Hainan to settle down and seek development opportunities in Hainan, "said Li Shijie.

Cai Zhenwei said that Hainan has steadily promoted the pilot work of the "first line liberalization, second line regulation" import and export policy system, implemented a series of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation policies, and the attractiveness of free trade ports is increasing. More and more foreign trade enterprises are choosing to settle in Hainan. For example, in 2022, there were 14300 newly registered foreign trade enterprises in Hainan Province. Among them, the newly added enterprises with international trade import and export performance have brought a trade increase of 22.81 billion yuan to the province's foreign trade, contributing as much as 42.2% to the growth of the province's foreign trade.

It is worth noting that consumer goods imports have injected impetus into the growth of Hainan's foreign trade. Data shows that in 2022, the import volume of consumer goods in Hainan exceeded 40 billion yuan, accounting for about one-third of the total import volume and more than 20 percentage points higher than the national average. In order to further expand imports, Li Shijie believes that we should continue to make good use of the platform of the Consumer Expo, promote the realization of "zero tariffs" for all imported goods during the exhibition period of the Consumer Expo, and better leverage the combined effect of the "platform+policy" of the Consumer Expo and offshore tax exemption; Optimize cross-border e-commerce policies, explore a new retail model of "online shopping bonded+offline self pickup", and gradually achieve more convenient pick-up for cross-border e-commerce; Attract international top brands and Chinese time-honored brands to establish regional or marketing headquarters in Hainan, cultivate new consumption formats in Hainan, assist Hainan in building an international tourism consumption center, and achieve global sales in the free trade port; Dynamically adjust the visa free policy, based on the bilateral trade situation in Hainan, dynamically adjust the scope of visa free countries, and implement more convenient visa free entry measures.

It is expected that Hainan's foreign trade will continue to grow in the future, but the high-quality development of Hainan's foreign trade must be based on the growth of a modern industrial system. Li Shijie said that building a modern industrial system is an effective way to support Hainan's deep integration into the global industrial chain and better integration into the global industrial division of labor system. In the process of promoting modern industrial development in Hainan Free Trade Port, the government should play a timely role, Develop a series of industrial policies to guide enterprises in industrial innovation and ensure fair competition, in order to achieve rapid growth and development of emerging industries, and further promote the construction of the modern industrial system of Hainan Free Trade Port.