General

The Ministry of Commerce and other eight departments recently decided to establish 29 national import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones in China, which is the latest measure of China to actively expand imports. So far, the number of national import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones has increased to 43.

Experts interviewed said that these demonstration zones actively carried out policy innovation, effectively promoted the deep integration of import trade with industry and consumption, formed their own advantages and characteristics, and gave full play to the leading role of international trade import. China has been the world's second largest importer for 13 consecutive years, and has become the "stabilizer" of global economy and trade with its super large market. With the further expansion of the demonstration zone, the high-quality development of China's import trade will be further accelerated.

Highlight the leading role and release the spillover effect

The pace of China's establishment of import demonstration zones can be described as orderly: in September 2011, the first national import trade promotion and innovation demonstration zone was landed in Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone; In December 2012, Tianjin Dongjiang Free Trade Port, Jiangsu Suzhou Industrial Park and Zhejiang Ningbo Free Trade Zone became the second batch of demonstration zones; In November 2020, 10 demonstration areas will be set up nationwide.  

Yang Xiangyang, a professor of the School of International Business and Economics of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, said that 43 demonstration zones currently cover most provinces, autonomous regions and cities in China, and the establishment time of the demonstration zones reflects the characteristics of the economically developed regions, such as first trial and prudent promotion; The regional distribution reflects the network structure and spatial layout of most provinces in China, with Shanghai as the center, gradually expanding to the Yangtze River Delta region and Beijing Tianjin Hebei region, and then extending to southeast coastal provinces and western economic provinces.

"After years of exploration and practice, each demonstration zone has given full play to its leading role in import, made new practices and breakthroughs in promoting import facilitation, exploring and innovating new forms of import trade, and accumulated beneficial experience for the high-quality development of China's import trade." Wei Hao, professor of the School of Economics and Business Administration of Beijing Normal University and director of the National Import Research Center, wrote in the 2022 China Import Development Report. For example, Guangzhou Nansha District has formed six 10 billion level import platforms focusing on alcohol, milk powder, health products and other industries; Dalian Jinpu New Area focuses on building Northeast Asia oil and gas trading center and corresponding industrial clusters; Kunshan has built a trading platform for imported coffee and a distribution center for raw beans to vigorously layout the whole coffee industry chain.

The leading role and spillover effect of import demonstration zones are constantly emerging. The Report shows that in the last 10 years, China's international trade import scale has increased from 11.48 trillion yuan in 2012 to 17.36 trillion yuan in 2021, an increase of 51.23% over 2012, with an average annual growth rate of about 4.7%.

In Yang Xiangyang's view, the import demonstration zone is an important carrier and effective support for China to implement a more proactive opening strategy and build a global network of high standard free trade zones. The expansion of the import demonstration zone will help actively explore and steadily promote institutional opening. By attracting global resource factors and strengthening the linkage between domestic and international markets, it will inject more vitality and provide a solid guarantee for China's initiative to expand imports, and comprehensively accelerate the improvement of the quality and level of import trade.

Full of distinctive features and highlight reform and innovation

"Judging from the 29 newly added demonstration areas, they are diversified in types, have a good foundation for construction, and have distinctive features, which will play an active role in policy mechanisms and facilitation." Yang Xiangyang said. For example, the airport economic zone of Beijing Capital International Airport relies on the advantages of the world's second largest international hub airport, makes full use of and integrates multi-level policy functions such as free trade pilot zone, comprehensive bonded zone, and comprehensive demonstration zone for expanding the opening of the service industry, continues to improve the port and bonded function system, and promotes consumption upgrading in Beijing and surrounding areas with import trade.

In recent years, Beijing's import trade has developed rapidly. From January to September this year, Beijing imported 2232.73 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.6%, 20.4 percentage points higher than the national growth rate, ranking first in the country. The relevant person in charge of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce said that, taking the opportunity of successfully becoming a national import trade promotion innovation demonstration zone, Beijing will further expand its own advantages in opening up, industrial advantages and regional functional policy advantages, take the lead in promoting innovative development through import trade, give better play to the role of regions in driving the development of Beijing Tianjin Hebei urban clusters and opening up to the outside world, and add new engines for promoting foreign trade growth.

In recent years, Xinwu District of Wuxi selected in this batch has accelerated the construction of a distinctive import trade service system, comprehensively improved the level of trade clearance facilitation, successfully piloted a series of innovative regulatory models such as domestic and foreign maintenance, centralized tax collection, actively carried out bonded research and development, general taxpayer pilot, cross-border e-commerce, public overseas warehouses and other new trade methods, promoted the construction of international postal exchange bureaus, and the environment for innovative development of import trade has become increasingly perfect. According to statistics, the international trade import volume of Xinwu District in 2021 will be 26.28 billion US dollars, accounting for 65.1% of the total import volume of the city.

Chongqing Liangjiang New Area deepened the reform of customs clearance mode according to the needs of enterprises for customs clearance, explored early declaration, two-step declaration, two-stage access, etc., and improved the level of import trade facilitation by strengthening customs clearance services by waterway and airport.

Wei Hao believes that in the future, we should further improve the construction quality of international trade import demonstration zones, achieve breakthroughs in import policies, explore new forms and models of import trade, and promote mature experience to the whole country. At the same time, we will continue to increase the number of international trade import demonstration zones, explore the mode and path of high-level opening up, and make new contributions to building a new development pattern and promoting high-quality economic development.