China has unveiled a comprehensive roadmap to supercharge its pilot free trade zones (FTZs), aiming to deepen high-standard opening up and drive high-quality development nationwide.
- Optimizing goods trade: streamline procedures and introduce a white-list system for imported medical R&D supplies and food with medicinal value.
- Boosting services trade: roll out reforms to invigorate finance, healthcare, logistics and beyond.
- Accelerating digital trade: adopt digital bills and signatures, facilitate cross-border data flow, and support digital platforms.
- Liberalizing investment: enhance facilitation, level up market access to attract and utilize international investment.
- Integrating innovation and industry: expand international sci-tech exchanges, align innovation chains with industrial chains, and foster advanced industrial clusters.
- Modernizing manufacturing: build a modern industrial system, upgrade industrial chains, and coordinate regional industrial development.
- Opening financial channels: deepen financial opening up to support cross-border transactions and corporate funding.
By bridging policy and practice, the guideline seeks to transform FTZs into global test beds for next-generation trade and investment models. For young entrepreneurs eyeing new markets, innovators pursuing cross-border collaboration and travelers scouting dynamic business hubs, these updates could unlock fresh opportunities in the Chinese mainland’s evolving economic landscape.
Stay tuned as China’s pilot FTZs gear up for a digital and open future — a development that will ripple across global trade networks and spark new partnerships worldwide.
Reference(s):
China rolls out guideline on upgrading pilot free trade zones
cgtn.com
