Fujian FTZ's innovative thinking gets business booming

Region hailed for helping companies trade goods and save money

The Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone is striving to create a new highland of reform that integrates openness and innovation, said local officials.

Since its launch in April 2015, the zone has taken the lead in opening up the market and upgrading its mechanisms.

Wu Nanxiang, head of the Fujian Provincial Department of Commerce, said: "The Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone adheres to institutional innovation as its core, boldly experimenting, breaking through and making independent reforms, and has launched a number of high-level institutional innovations.

"It has established an institutional system that is in line with the prevailing rules of international investment and trade, created a legal, international and convenient business environment, assisted in the all-around promotion of high-quality development, and established a new open economic system," Wu said.

Benchmarking itself against the World Bank's business environment evaluation index system, the zone is focused on the reform of "delegating management and services", promoting the innovation in management models with simpler approvals, higher efficiency and stronger supervision, offering better services and stimulating mass entrepreneurship and innovation.

Over the past few years, it has continued to cancel, delegate and adjust the approval items and streamlined procedures.

"We have also taken the lead in implementing the 'on-the-fly system' for the registration of enterprises' establishment, which can be completed in half an hour as soon as the relevant materials are complete," said Xin Lianhua, head of the economic development bureau of the management committee at the Fuzhou Area of the Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone.

"The system integrates independent self-help measures for commercial registration, clarifies the new regulatory mechanism with credit as the core, and builds more transparent and efficient market access."

Xu Xu, deputy director of the administrative examination and approval bureau of the Pingtan Comprehensive Experimental Zone, said: "Pingtan, on the basis of implementing the reform of 'separation of licenses and licenses', carried out the pilot reform of 'one enterprise, one license', and transferred qualified industry access permits and business licenses.

"With one transaction, the market entity can carry out general business activities with a business license loaded with the information of 'one enterprise, one certificate', which greatly improves the convenience and predictability of the market entity's work."

Another key approach was to relax market access and establish an investment service system that conforms to international rules.

The Fujian FTZ has strengthened this connection with international advanced economic and trade rules, promoted the opening of key areas, carried out in-depth investment system reforms, and accelerated the formation of a fair, unified and efficient market environment.

Foreign investment is more open. The negative list of foreign investment access in the pilot free trade zone has been reduced from the initial 190 items to only 30 items at present.

Pingtan area took the lead in implementing the "Four Ones" of investment approval reform.

It has unified all administrative approval items of investment projects into four aspects: planning site selection and land use; project review and verification filing; design review and construction permit; and unified completion acceptance.

The Xiamen area has established a "five-one" working mechanism for project approval, namely, a blueprint for overall project implementation; a system for unified management; a single window to provide comprehensive services; a form to integrate application materials; and a set of mechanisms to standardize approval operations; and application.

The number of materials has been reduced from 373 to 76, which greatly assists enterprises and has become a national reform example.

The zone is also optimizing trade facilitation measures and is establishing a leading customs clearance supervision service system in the country.

The zone has promoted the reform of an intelligent customs clearance model to achieve simpler customs clearance procedures, shorter times and lower costs.

This has promoted the transformation and upgrading of trade and the development and growth of new business models and new platforms.

It has created a leading single service window for international trade in the country. Since its establishment in 2015, the Fujian Single Window for International Trade has been repeatedly upgraded to version 4.0, connecting more than 40 units, providing more than 100 port administration and trade services, and integrating customs, ports, commerce, taxation and finance.

Chai Yong, director of the Fujian Electronic Port Service Center, said: "The Single Window for International Trade allows data to run instead of people running errands. It provides enterprises with a centralized business management platform, and a data exchange platform for trade supervision departments, thus realizing a better customs clearance process.

"It is simpler and more efficient, with lower costs and better environment. At present, there are more than 16,000 registered users on the platform," he said.

Wang Yixing, general manager of Fuzhou Foreign Agency Customs Brokerage, said: "Customs has simplified the declaration process, and the relevant documents are electronic, which speeds up the timeline for customs clearance of goods, significantly shortens the time of the containers in the port, and can save a lot of costs."

Deng Guangxiong, director of the economic development bureau of the management committee of the Xiamen area, said: "Xiamen took the lead in launching the integrated reform of port fees reduction and efficiency improvement, reducing cargo port fees, port facility security fees and pilotage fees, and exempting inspection fees on a trial basis."

At present, the compliance cost of container import and export at Xiamen Port has been reduced to the lowest level of all major ports in the country, which is basically the same as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Another initiative for the zone is to promote financial openness and innovation, and integrate financial services into the real economy.

Based on the needs of serving the real economy, various financial openings and innovations have been promoted, and corporate financing has become more convenient at lower costs.

The zone aims to assist cross-border finance by promoting a full-scale cross-border macro-prudential management model.

It aims to lower the threshold for multinational companies' cross-border capital pool business, help multinationals to adjust domestic and foreign capital surpluses and shortages, and reduce financial costs.

It has also optimized financial services for China's Taiwan-based enterprises through pilot programs.

In January, pilot measures involving settlement and payment for foreign exchange income under capital accounts; foreign debt accounts; foreign debt models and financing currencies were upgraded to further help cross-border financing and capital use by Taiwan province-funded enterprises.

The zone is making full use of cross-departmental data sharing, resource sharing and platform interoperability to carry out innovation.

The sound financial ecology of the Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone has attracted 171 financial institutions and 8,968 quasi-financial institutions of various types. Mawei Fund Town has attracted 111 private equity fund managers and 214 private equity funds, with a fund size of 167.3 billion yuan ($25.8 billion) and investment of 25.8 billion yuan in projects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the zone has coordinated efforts in pandemic prevention and control and economic and social development, continued using its advantages in system innovation, and took measures to solve the difficulties in employment, financing and compliance of enterprises.

It has established a linkage assistance mechanism for key enterprises, gone to the grassroots and served the front line, and guarantees the needs of enterprises for pandemic prevention materials.

The Fuzhou area has introduced models of "no meeting" approval, "shared employees" and noncontact tax payment, and cooperated with technology companies to provide free remote office software systems for enterprises in the area.

The Xiamen area launched an online Enterprise Resumption Recruitment Platform to match labor supply and demand for companies in the same city, and promoted notary agencies and international commercial mediation centers to provide enterprises with free legal services, ensuring that enterprises can resume work and production in an orderly and quick manner.

The zone is continuing to speed up the efficiency of customs clearance.

The new models of logistics supervision, such as "ship-to-ship" shipment of dry bulk exports, and "water-to-water transshipment" of foreign trade containers, have expanded the application of noninductive customs clearance and nonintrusive inspection technologies, and are accelerating the speed of supply chain turnover.

Xiao Xingguo, purchasing department manager of Fujian Yixin Iron and Steel, said: "The iron ore and coal needed for the company's production are imported.

"The pandemic has had an impact on the supply of raw materials. But Fuzhou Customs has implemented an unloading and direct delivery model.

"After the iron ore and coal arrive at the port for inspection, they can be directly taken out of the port, improving the efficiency of the supply of raw materials for production and reducing pressure on corporate funds."

The zone has also played a demonstrative and leading role for high-quality development.

Gironde (Fujian) Liquor Industry is an imported wine trading company in Quanzhou Comprehensive Free Trade Zone.

Chen Chunlin, who is in charge of the company, said: "Quanzhou Comprehensive Free Trade Zone has taken the lead in replicating and promoting policies such as 'bonded display transaction', 24-hour customs clearance for checkpoints and overtime filing on holidays, according to individual needs, so that enterprises can fully enjoy the free-trade reform dividends.

"This year, the company will add wines and original small bottles. The production capacity of the three production lines, including labeling, will rise sharply after they are put into production in August."

Driven by the zone, Fujian's overall customs clearance times continue to be at the forefront nationally. In June, the overall customs clearance time for imports and exports in Fujian was 28.12 hours and 1.51 hours, respectively, among the top seven foreign trade provinces and cities in China.

From January to June, the scale of Fujian's foreign trade reached a new high, with a total of 859.96 billion yuan in imports and exports, a year-on-year increase of 39.1 percent.

The growth rate was 12 percentage points higher than the rest of the country.

Of them, exports were 503.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.9 percent. Imports were 356.07 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40.7 percent.

The province's paid-in foreign capital was 24.04 billion yuan during the period, a year-on-year increase of 12.8 percent.

The annual target was 65.3 percent, which was 15.3 percentage points ahead of schedule.

Since 2018, the zone has been praised by the State Council for implementing major policies and measures, creating exclusive experiences and practices, and optimizing the business environment.

It has also been affirmed by the Central Reform Office, the Ministry of Commerce and other ministries and commissions.

The research team headed by Gu Xueming, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation at the Ministry of Commerce, after onsite inspection and evaluation, believes that "the Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone combines adheres to benchmarking itself against international advanced rules, and insists on reforming system integration".

At the same time, the results of institutional innovation with a demonstrative and leading role have been promoted and implemented across the country and the province, serving as a test field of the reform and opening-up.