Pilot FTZs in China's coastal regions unwaveringly deepen opening up

As China marks the 10th anniversary of establishing three pilot free trade zones (FTZs) in its coastal regions, the country has demonstrated its unwavering commitment to deepening reform and advancing high-level opening up.

Over the past decade, the pilot FTZs in Tianjin municipality and provinces of Guangdong and Fujian have yielded numerous achievements in institutional innovation, trade facilitation and industrial development.

Experimental policies

In the Nansha area of the Guangdong pilot FTZ, citizens and tourists can hail a self-driving vehicle, which runs across the district populated by about a million residents.

Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous driving technology developer, set up its research and development center in Nansha in 2017, the year after its establishment. At the time, China had yet to introduce policies on autonomous driving. With the pilot FTZ's policies, Guangzhou chose to pioneer and experiment with drafting regulations, paving the way for the legalization of autonomous vehicle road testing.

The policies of pilot FTZs have benefited both domestic and international businesses.

In response to the needs of airlines and maintenance enterprises, authorities in the Tianjin pilot FTZ have tailored and introduced bonded maintenance policies, enabling aviation companies worldwide to enjoy more convenient services for both routine maintenance and passenger-to-cargo conversions in the pilot FTZ.

Under the previous customs rules, aircraft conversions required prepayment of import duties and a deposit of approximately 10 million yuan (about 1.39 million U.S. dollars), which would be refunded about six months after the completion of the three-month conversion process. At the same time, maintenance companies had to lease warehouses in a bonded zone for parts storage.

However, since 2019, the Tianjin pilot FTZ's bonded maintenance initiative has removed the deposit requirement, enabling foreign aircraft to be serviced in this zone without upfront capital expenditure.

This initiative saves the aircraft maintenance company Tianjin Haite Aircraft Engineering Co., Ltd. approximately 50,000 yuan a month in warehouse rental costs, as it can now store maintenance components in its own facility. "Our overseas revenue has soared from 2 million U.S. dollars in 2019 to 15.5 million U.S. dollars in 2025, thanks to the zone's bonded maintenance policy," said Li Han, the company's deputy general manager.

The Fujian pilot FTZ has also implemented multiple experimental policies to boost cross-border trade, including streamlining the administrative approval process, shortening the customs clearance period, and granting equal treatment to domestic and foreign enterprises.

Taking customs clearance as an example, Fujian has offered one-stop customs clearance services for companies in the pilot FTZ areas, which allows them to apply for customs clearance without docking the vessels. The policy has reduced logistics costs by 28 percent and improved customs clearance efficiency by 30 percent on average.

Zhongjing Petrochemical Group Co., Ltd., a polypropylene producer located in the Fuzhou area of the Fujian pilot FTZ, requires substantial production materials imported from overseas each year. Under the traditional customs declaration model, vessels must wait for the declaration and inspection of all cargo before unloading, incurring daily port stay-over costs of up to 360,000 yuan per vessel.

The local customs authority conducted on-site research and tailored a "compartmentalized declaration and inspection upon unloading" supervision model. This has resulted in an average reduction of one day in the operational cycle for individual vessels.

Huang Min, deputy general manager of the company, said the new customs measures have improved the efficiency of their raw material turnover by nearly 30 percent. "This is particularly crucial for bulk hazardous materials such as propane, which have high demands for storage and transportation timeliness."

The optimization of the customs clearance process ensures continuous operation of production lines. "This year, we plan to expand our production capacity and anticipate importing approximately 2.6 million tonnes of propane and other materials, with the new model expected to save us over 20 million yuan in port stay fees," Huang said.

Deepening opening up 

"The three pilot FTZs have comprehensively deepened reform and led high-standard opening up with high-level modern industrial clusters," Meng Huating, a commerce ministry official, told a press conference last week.

The Guangdong pilot FTZ has seen its total trade volume surge from approximately 110 billion yuan in 2015 to around 740 billion yuan in 2024, achieving an average annual growth rate of over 24 percent. The Fujian pilot FTZ has 138,000 newly established enterprises, 8.8 times the number before its establishment. The official said that the Tianjin counterpart has attracted an average annual utilization of foreign investment exceeding 2 billion U.S. dollars, contributing more than 40 percent of the city's total actual foreign investment while occupying just 1 percent of its land area.

In the Qianhai and Shekou areas of the Guangdong pilot FTZ, authorities have been attracting more global talent as a move to drive deeper opening up.

To solve their work and living problems, global professionals can visit the Qianhai International Talent Hub, a one-stop center offering 700 government and business services, including streamlined visa and work permit processing.

The hub has also launched an "In Qianhai" online portal, which has provided employment information, business policies and other customized support for 48,000 people.

To make financial activities more convenient, the Tianjin pilot FTZ has established over 3,000 Free Trade (FT) accounts to bolster cross-border trade and investment for domestic and international enterprises, with transaction volume surpassing 1.15 trillion yuan.

Previously, companies needed to have multiple accounts and go through intricate processes -- including currency conversion -- to procure foreign goods. FT accounts now enable direct payments in Chinese currency, renminbi, and foreign currencies through a unified account, offering flexible financing solutions and competitive onshore-offshore exchange rates.

Bank of China has customized financial products by integrating FT accounts with local specialized industries, such as leasing and shipping logistics, providing one-stop services like online freight settlement, asset trading and cross-border financing.

"FT accounts streamline cross-border transactions, reduce costs and enhance returns for businesses," said Sun Yong, vice president of the bank's Tianjin branch.

With a global eye, the Xiamen pilot FTZ area in Fujian has been facilitating more convenient trade by taking advantage of its coastal location with ports and shipping facilities.

The area is endeavoring to build a hub connecting the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, while building an interconnected economic corridor. So far, 122 shipping routes named after the "Silk Road Maritime" have been opened, linking 46 countries and 145 ports.

To date, China has set up 22 pilot FTZs. In 2024, they attracted 28.25 billion dollars of foreign direct investment in actual use, accounting for 24.3 percent of the country's total, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

China established its first pilot FTZ in Shanghai in 2013, with the major mission of trialing transformative reforms in government functions, the country's financial system, trade services, foreign investment and taxation, and pilot policies that could later be applied across the country.