General

Against the background of far-reaching epidemic effects and sluggish economic recovery in the st century, international trade and investment are facing multiple tests. As a new highland of China's reform and opening up, the pilot free trade zone plays a key role in stabilizing the basic foreign trade and foreign capital market.

Since this year, many national pilot free trade zones have taken institutional innovation as the core, based on the advantages of regional characteristics, highlighted differentiated exploration, strengthened system integration, and achieved remarkable results in construction, better serving China's strategic layout of comprehensive opening up.

Take the lead in innovation

Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone, driven by innovation and led by openness, has made bold attempts, bold breakthroughs and independent reforms, forming a number of distinctive institutional reform and innovation achievements. The 120 reform pilot tasks entrusted by the state to Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone have been fully implemented; Evaluate the third batch of 20 autonomous region level system innovation achievements. Six reform pilot experiences were submitted to the state, and two new innovation measures were approved and filed by the General Administration of Customs; Establish a regular monitoring mechanism and indicator system, and carry out daily monitoring of business environment in an innovative way. This practice was promoted by the 10th full text of the joint inter ministerial conference briefing on free trade pilot zones of the State Council in 2022.

Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone is China's first pilot free trade zone to achieve expansion. According to Zhejiang Free Trade Office, through policy empowerment, Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone has vigorously promoted institutional innovation and has accumulated 382 institutional innovation achievements, including 113 national initiatives.

Recently, Zhejiang Free Trade Office released the best integrated institutional innovation achievements and excellent cases of linkage innovation zones in China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone in 2022, and 12 integrated institutional innovation achievements and 12 linkage innovation cases from four areas of Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone were successfully selected.

In addition, to serve the strategy of the rise of central China, Hunan Pilot Free Trade Zone actively expanded international trade air routes, opened the province's first direct cargo route from Changsha to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to South America, opened the direct African route from Changsha to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and increased the number of international cargo routes at Huanghua Airport to 14. Serving the ecological protection and high-quality development strategy of the Yellow River basin, Shandong Pilot Free Trade Zone has promoted the collaborative cooperation along the Yellow River basin, built the Alliance of Pilot Free Trade Zones along the Yellow River basin, strengthened regional cooperation around customs, transportation, information sharing, etc., and explored a new model of regional coordinated development.

Tian Yuan, deputy researcher of the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said: "Institutional innovation is the core of the pilot free trade zone, and serving the national trial system and major national strategies is one of the important functions of the pilot free trade zone. China's pilot free trade zone continues to shoulder its mission, work hard, and focus on serving the major national strategies to highlight differentiation exploration, and has achieved remarkable results."

Wang Peng, a researcher of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed that the current pilot free trade zone has given full play to its policy and institutional advantages, carried out reform and innovation, promoted the gathering of relevant characteristic industries, and promoted the rapid development of the local economy. From the national perspective, a pilot free trade zone system with broad scope and multiple levels has been formed.

Enterprises have sufficient confidence in dividend development

The dividends of the pilot free trade zone continued to release, and enterprises felt a lot. In Chongzuo District of Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone, Guangxi Noah Supply Chain Co., Ltd., established in 2019, will break through the 100 million yuan industrial output value for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021 by virtue of the spring breeze of the policy of the pilot free trade zone.

Zhang Zhihui, the deputy general manager of the company, pointed out that previously, because of the strict implementation of epidemic prevention and control management measures at ports, there were often long queues of trucks waiting for customs clearance at Youyi Pass. Chongzuo District adjusted the customs clearance method at ports in a timely manner, and introduced the "white list" system of key enterprises to actively ensure the smooth customs clearance of supply chain enterprises and the priority clearance of important goods. After the opening of Checkpoint 3 in Pingxiang Comprehensive Bonded Area in August, cross-border e-commerce, bonded logistics, bonded processing and other goods do not need to queue up with port vehicles in front of Checkpoint 2 to enter the Comprehensive Bonded Area, saving enterprises a lot of time and logistics costs.

Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone has made bold trials, bold breakthroughs and independent reforms, forming a batch of innovative and characteristic institutional achievements, of which Zhejiang Oil Center in Zhoushan District is the witness and beneficiary. Lai Xin, general manager of Zhejiang International Oil and Gas Trading Center Co., Ltd., introduced to the International Business Daily that Zhejiang Oil Center was one of the first ten enterprises to settle in Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone after its establishment. In 2018, the Implementation Plan for the Construction of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone International Oil Trading Center was officially released, which clearly defined that the construction of "international oil and gas trading center" should be promoted based on Zhejiang Oil Center. Zhejiang Oil Center has also actively contributed to the open development of the whole oil and gas industry chain of Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone. Last year, Zhejiang Oil Center promoted the launch of the "capacity pre-sale" model to lock in profits for suppliers and broaden business channels for buyers. This year, Zhejiang Oil Warehouse Receipts were listed on the standard warehouse receipt platform of the previous period, and Zhejiang Oil Center and the previous period realized the sharing and intercommunication of warehouse receipt resources.

"Benefiting from the pilot free trade zone, one-stop service and good business environment, the platform now has 2500 member units, accounting for about 1/3 of the total oil and gas enterprises in the pilot free trade zone. It is estimated that the international trade volume this year will exceed 300 billion yuan." Lai Xin said.

Zhejiang Big Data Trading Center also benefited from the dividends of the pilot free trade zone. Zhejiang Big Data Trading Center is the first and only provincial data trading center in Zhejiang Province. In 2021, the data transactions of the Center will be more than 200 million, with the annual transaction volume exceeding 70 million yuan.

The Measures for Data Exit Security Assessment implemented in July this year pointed out that "data processors should conduct data exit risk self-assessment before declaring data exit security assessment". Liu Mengdi, assistant to the general manager and director of the general manager office of the trading center, said that many enterprises with data outbound demand did not know whether they met the conditions for reporting security assessment to the network information department, nor how to conduct a self-assessment of data outbound risk. If the data compliance service in the data international trading zone is used, the enterprise can evaluate its own data through expert interpretation and applicability self inspection, so as to determine whether it needs to declare data exit security assessment to the network information department. "Under the publicity support and organization of the pilot free trade zone, many enterprises have in-depth knowledge of the company's service and actively registered. At present, there are dozens of online members on the data trading service platform, and I believe that more enterprises will actively settle in the platform in the future."

At present, the situation at home and abroad is undergoing profound and complex changes, and the construction of the pilot free trade zone is also facing new situations and new requirements.

Gu Xueming, Secretary of the Party Committee and President of the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, suggested that the pilot free trade zone should study and propose new measures for institutional innovation in more fields and at a deeper level, so as to lay a solid foundation for China's participation in and leadership of international economic and trade rules, and seize the first opportunity for local opening up and development; Based on resource endowments, we will carry out in-depth differentiation exploration, identify industries, formats and models that meet our own positioning, improve the level of opening up and development of the region, and also drive high-quality development of regional economy; It is the concept of productivity to build a firm business environment, further reduce institutional costs, and stimulate the vitality of market players.