An aerial drone photo taken on March 13, 2024 shows the Yangpu international container terminal in south China's Hainan Province. Major projects in China's tropical island province of Hainan are under smooth construction. Photo: Xinhua

The Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP) will implement a new negative list for foreign investment in 2024, and set up and operate a multi-functional free trade account, in a bid to increase the inflows of goods and capital in South China's Hainan Province, officials said on Thursday.

Analysts said that the Hainan FTP, while attracting foreign investment and trade, will provide increasing development opportunities for neighboring countries and enterprises from all over the world.

The FTP will also vigorously develop new business models such as cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehousing, offshore trade, and digital trade, and attract more international inflows of goods and capital with freer and more convenient trade and investment, said Liu Xiaoming, governor of Hainan, on Thursday at a press conference held in Beijing.

Boosting the development of Hainan FTP will be a major work for the province this year to ensure its GDP growth goal of 8 percent for 2024.

According to Liu, there will be seven major focuses for Hainan's economic development in 2024: preparations for FTP's independent customs operations, increase in investment, upgrading of international tourism and consumption, enhanced industrial chains, improvement in business environment, improvement in financial stability and increase in foreign trade and foreign investment.

"Hainan will finish the construction of all the necessary infrastructure and software for independent customs operations by 2024," Liu said, adding that the Hainan FTP will conduct comprehensive and whole-process stress testing on policies and systems.

In 2020, a master plan for the Hainan FTP was released, with the goal of building it into a high-level FTP with global influence by 2050.

According to the plan, an FTP system focusing on trade and investment liberalization and facilitation will be "basically established" in Hainan by 2025 and "more mature" by 2035.
Besides the construction of the FTP, Hainan will also vigorously boost its tourism industry in 2024, the governor noted.

In the first quarter of 2024, the number of tourists received by Hainan is expected to increase by 17.6 percent year-on-year, while total tourism revenue is expected to increase by 32.3 percent, of which inbound tourism is four times that of the same period in 2023, Liu said.

"For inbound tourists, we will make full use of the visa-free policies covering 59 countries and introduce more entry facilitation measures," Liu said.

The governor said that Hainan will soon launch a "Hainan wallet," which will enable inbound tourists to convert foreign currencies into electronic yuan on their mobile phones upon arrival in Hainan. The electronic yuan will connect with China's mobile payment system.

Building the Hainan FTP is to make it an anchor market for China and members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). It will become an important base for economic and trade cooperation between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Chi Fulin, head of the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"The construction of Hainan FTP is at an important historical moment. It is necessary to attract global high-quality production factors, attract world investors to invest and develop in Hainan, and share in China's big market," said Chi.

Since 2018 when China proposed setting up a free trade zone in Hainan, the number of new foreign-funded enterprises in the island province has reached 6,543, with an average annual growth rate of 65 percent, as international investors have cast a vote of confidence in the province's future growth.

During the past six years, actual use of foreign capital in Hainan increased by 39.6 percent annually. Trade in goods grew by an average annual rate of 22.2 percent and trade in services grew by 18.7 percent annually. The average annual growth rate of imports and exports of goods with ASEAN was 12.4 percent, official data showed.

Hainan will be a linking point between China's huge market and Southeast Asia. Investing in Hainan FTP will be a development opportunity for neighboring countries and enterprises, Liang Haiming, dean of the Hainan University Belt and Road Research Institute, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"The demographic dividend of Hainan has just started to emerge in the financial, service and consumer sectors. And there is no other country in the world with such a large number of and obvious business opportunities besides China, which is expected to import some $30 trillion in goods and $10 trillion in services in the next 15 years," Liang said.