Guideline on enhancing pilot FTZs released

IN an effort to promote high-level opening up and drive high-quality development, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have issued a guideline policy to further enhance the country's pilot free trade zones (FTZs), the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.

The guideline calls for comprehensively enhancing the level of institutional openness, the effectiveness of systematic reforms and the quality of an open economy in the pilot free trade zones in the next five years and further improving the policy system, focusing on the free and convenient flow of trade, investment, capital, transportation and personnel, and the orderly flow of data with an emphasis on security.

It called for promoting the optimization and upgrading of trade of goods, invigorating the development of services trade and supporting innovative development in digital trade.

The guideline said that China will explore the establishment of a "white list" system for biopharmaceutical companies to import research and development items, allowing exemptions from the import drug clearance form. It will also explore the establishment of a "white list" system for imported food and drug substances, allowing food and drug substances for food use to pass customs according to actual use.

Investment liberalization and facilitation should be advanced, and the level of opening up should be enhanced to attract and utilize foreign capital with greater efforts. The guideline urged promoting the integration of innovation chains and industrial chains, and expanding international sci-tech exchanges and cooperation.

Work should be done in building a modern industrial system, enhancing the modernization level of industrial chains, promoting the establishment of advanced industrial clusters and facilitating the coordinated development of industries in the pilot FTZs, it said.

It will build efficient, smooth and open channels, improve the level of shipping services and strengthen the radiation capacity of land and air transportation. It will be allowed that liquefied natural gas is used as fuel for international ships and enjoys a bonded policy, said the guideline.

We will make the pilot free trade zones into important hubs for facilitating the smooth flow of domestic and international circulation, and a powerful engine for promoting high-quality development, so as to better play a demonstration role in further comprehensively deepening reform and promoting Chinese modernization, the guideline highlighted.

The positioning of the pilot free trade zones will be as an anchor for the new coordinates of institutional opening up, aiming to achieve a comprehensive improvement in the level of institutional opening up in about five years, Wan Zhe, an economist and professor at the Belt and Road School of Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times on Monday.

The core breakthroughs of high-level opening up include global digital governance, financial opening up and cultivating new quality productive forces, which will help the domestic industrial chain to move up the global value chain, she added.

"China's focus for the pilot free trade zones has shifted from export processing and bonded logistics to institutional innovation and alignment with international standards," Huang Bin, a deputy director of the Guoyan Economic Research Institute, told the Global Times.

The orientation of the pilot free trade zones is very clear, that is, to steadily expand the opening of rules, regulations, management and standards to promote reform integration, Huang added, citing details such as the opening of the medical and pharmaceutical fields, as well as the "white list" for food and drug substances, which are all measures aimed at high-level openness. GLOBAL TIMES