Since the official establishment of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone in September 2013, the construction of China's Pilot Free Trade Zone has gone through ten years. During the past ten years, China has formed a "wild goose formation" with 21 Pilot Free Trade Zones and Hainan Free Trade Port, building up a reform and opening-up innovation pattern covering the east, west, south, north and south.

　　Ten years of progressive development, butterfly change toward the future. Standing at a new starting point in history, the construction of Pilot Free Trade Zones ushers in new opportunities and will continue to inject surging vitality into the high-quality development of China's economy.

　　New Highland for Attracting Foreign Investment

　　The U.S. Yabao company last October in Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone Qinzhou Port Area spent $ 200 million to set up the Guangxi Yabao Lithium Co., Ltd. that year to complete the production of 2,022 tons of lithium hydroxide, to achieve gross industrial output value of 1 billion yuan, paid taxes of 17 million yuan.

　　Talking about the reasons for investing in Qinzhou, Zou Ling, director of production operations of Guangxi Yabao Lithium Co., Ltd. said that it has a new western land and sea corridor and land canal construction opportunities. In the Pilot Free Trade Zone sea-rail transportation integrated reform dividend radiation, foreign trade goods in the Beibu Gulf Port without changing the box can be exported to Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and other places on board, greatly facilitating the company to expand the ASEAN and other overseas markets.

　　In addition, the Pilot Free Trade Zone for the settled enterprises in the tax, foreign investment, talent and other aspects to give strong support. "Within a day to help us implement a good staff accommodation problems, solve the company's worries." Zou Ling said.

　　Data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that the Pilot Free Trade Zones have made positive contributions to the development of foreign trade and foreign investment.2022, the 21 Pilot Free Trade Zones realized a total import and export volume of 7.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.5%, accounting for 17.8% of the country's total volume; the actual use of foreign investment exceeded 220 billion yuan, accounting for 18.1% of the country's total volume.

　　In the first half of this year, the actual use of foreign investment in the 21 Pilot Free Trade Zones continued to grow steadily, of which the actual use of foreign investment in high-tech industries increased by 21.2% year-on-year. Yang Tao, director of the Comprehensive Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said, "The Pilot FTZs have attracted 18.4% of the country's foreign investment with less than four-thousandths of a percent of the country's land area."

　　Leader in System Innovation

　　Behind the leapfrog development of the Pilot Free Trade Zone, the support of institutional innovation is indispensable. Over the past ten years, China's Pilot FTZs have accumulated 278 institutional innovations, covering a wide range of types of areas such as investment facilitation, trade facilitation, financial openness and innovation, and supervision during and after the event.

　　The "2022-2023 China Pilot Free Trade Zone Institutional Innovation Index" recently released by Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of Comprehensive Research on Pilot Free Trade Zones shows that the overall score of institutional innovation index of China's 54 Pilot Free Trade Zones averaged 78.03 points, which is an improvement compared with last year's score of 76.7 points.

　　During the past ten years, Pilot Free Trade Zones (FTZs) around the world have carried forward the spirit of "boldly breaking through, boldly trying, and independently reforming", and have continuously innovated and improved the business environment. 2013, Shanghai FTZ launched China's first negative list of foreign investment in Pilot Free Trade Zones. Soon, the practice of the negative list was extended to all FTZs and the whole country, and has been continuously reduced.2022 Starting from January 1, the new version of the negative list for foreign investment access in Pilot FTZs was further reduced to 27 items, with a reduction ratio of 10%, in which the manufacturing industry entries were realized to be zeroed out.

　　At present, China's Pilot FTZ system innovation presents a steady progress trend. In Guangxi FTZ Chongzuo Area, the rapid development of border trade, both to improve the income of the border people, but also to reduce the enterprise procurement costs; in Yunnan FTZ Kunming Area, 2020 on-line "to Taodong" platform, so that the enterprise power purchase like in the e-commerce platform shopping is as convenient, and effectively crack the small and medium-sized micro-enterprises to enter the market transactions "Hard threshold" ......

　　Li Xiaoxu, associate professor of East China University of Political Science and Law, said that from the initial "fragmentation" of reform and innovation to today's system integration and innovation, the Pilot Free Trade Zone has always played an important role in promoting the opening of the system to dare to try and dare to do, dare to be the first.

　　Differentiated development road

　　The reporter found in the research that each Pilot Free Trade Zone has different strategic objectives and positioning according to its own location characteristics. Relying on Hong Kong and Macao, serving the mainland and facing the world, Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone takes the construction of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao in-depth cooperation demonstration area as its mission; strengthening Fujian-Taiwan cooperation has become a prominent feature of Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone; high-quality development of the marine economy is a differentiated exploration task of Shandong Pilot Free Trade Zone ......

　　Currently, the Hainan Free Trade Port is carrying out pilot projects on docking international high-standard economic and trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, which will accumulate favorable conditions for China's participation in international economic and trade rule-making.

　　Lin Zhigang, deputy director of the Administrative Committee of Kunming Area of Yunnan Pilot Free Trade Zone, said that Yunnan FTZ will give full play to the location advantage of "along the border + cross-border", and seize the three major opportunities of the opening of the China-Laos Railway, the entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and the trusteeship of Kunming over Mawan, so that it can take up the role as a "dam" and "reservoir" for the transfer of industries from the country. "At the same time, it actively promotes the development of cross-border flows of people, goods and capital, and accumulates experience for the country to explore innovative modes of foreign cooperation in the Pilot Free Trade Zone.

　　Guangxi Pilot Free Trade Zone is based on both coastal and border advantages, highlighting the opening up along the border, land and sea linkage, to build China - ASEAN open cooperation highland. In the future, it will accelerate the construction of cross-border industrial chain supply chain for ASEAN such as electronic information, new energy automobile, new chemical materials, processing of ASEAN specialties, processing of traditional Chinese medicinal materials, etc., and promote the expansion of cross-border trade and improve quality.

　　"The company's main raw material cool grass needs to be imported from Vietnam, it is because Pingxiang has the location advantage of neighboring Vietnam, so Chongzuo FTZ was established as soon as we settled here, and the FTZ grows together." Hu Jianhong, general manager of Guangxi Pingxiang Shenghetang Health Food Co. Ltd. said, "Taking the high-speed train of the FTZ, we will surely have better development in the future."