On April 21st, the first free trade pilot zone in Northern China, the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone, celebrated its 9th anniversary since its establishment.
Over the past nine years, this 119.9 square kilometer area has been transforming into a platform for high-level open cooperation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, a pioneer zone for national reform and opening up, and a testing ground for institutional innovation.
The Tianjin Municipal People's Government Information Office recently held a press conference titled "Aligning with International High-Standard Economic and Trade Rules and Deeply Implementing the Free Trade Pilot Zone Enhancement Action." The Deputy Mayor of Tianjin, Li Wenhai, introduced that the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone has been focusing on institutional innovation as its core task, with the mission of being a pioneer and a tester, having implemented a total of 615 institutional innovation measures, among which 42 have been leading and symbolic innovations that have been replicated and promoted nationwide.
Liang Yiming, the full-time Deputy Director of the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone Management Committee, responded to questions from the First Financial Daily reporter at the press conference, stating that the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone proactively aligns with high-standard international economic and trade rules, fully leveraging the role of the "testing ground" for institutional innovation, and conducting exploratory institutional innovation for open development centered on the needs of enterprise development. The next step will involve the formation of a dedicated task force to assist enterprises in data asset sorting, important data catalog reporting, and data export security assessments, continuously enhancing the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone's capabilities in data convergence and integration, shared development, exploitation and utilization, and security protection, further strengthening the digital economy and forming new quality productive forces.
Promoting institutional openness with high standards
Forming replicable and promotable institutional innovation outcomes is the core proposition of the construction of the free trade pilot zone. Since its establishment, the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone has continuously played the role of a comprehensive experimental platform for reform and opening up, taking the lead in aligning with international standards in rules, regulations, management, and standards, gradually becoming a "new highland" of institutional innovation.
At present, the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone has a total of 88,000 business entities, with an average annual actual use of foreign capital exceeding 2 billion US dollars, and an average annual import and export volume of more than 200 billion yuan. With only 1% of the city's land area, it has contributed 30% of the city's foreign trade import and export volume and 40% of the actual use of foreign capital.
The Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone has innovatively introduced measures such as non-stop ship certification, being the first to implement the "simplest notification commitment system"; it has established the first grassroots court for international commercial trials and specialized courts for financing leases, pioneering the "credit + application" asset guarantee method; it has built a center for entry and exit affairs services, expanding the recognition catalog of overseas professional qualifications to 27 items; and it has issued the first national standard for the classification and grading of enterprise data in the free trade pilot zone, exploring the safe and orderly flow of commercial data.
In June last year, the Tianjin Free Trade Zone received more good news: the State Council issued the "Several Measures on Piloting the Alignment with International High-Standards to Promote Institutional Openness in Conditional Free Trade Pilot Zones and Free Trade Ports," proposing to pilot the alignment with relevant international high-standard economic and trade rules in free trade pilot zones and Hainan Free Trade Port that meet the conditions, steadily expanding institutional openness.
Continuously aligning with international high-standard economic and trade rules has also forced reforms and promoted the transformation of government functions and innovation in management models. Li Wenhai introduced that over the past few years, the business environment has been continuously optimized, supporting enterprise development and promoting economic growth. For example, the "one enterprise, one certificate" comprehensive reform has been implemented in 50 industries, 198 business-related operational items have been included in the "separation of licenses and permits" reform, 112 items have achieved "one thing, one time handling," and a full-process assistance service mechanism for foreign investment has been established.Li Wenhai stated that in the next step, the Tianjin Free Trade Zone will bravely venture into the deep waters of reform and innovation, focusing on key areas such as trade, investment, finance, intellectual property rights, and environmental protection. It will proactively carry out pilot tests, build a systematic and regulatory model that connects with a high-level institutional opening, and strengthen systematic and integrated reform and innovation across regions, departments, and fields. A series of symbolic and leading measures will be formed in areas such as rule connection and promotion, high-end factor aggregation, technological and industrial innovation, and security risk prevention and control.
Cultivating Advantageous Industries with High Energy Levels
In January of this year, more than 8,300 tons of fresh Chilean cherries crossed the ocean and were docked and unloaded at the Dongjiang area of the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone, then sold to major markets in the north. The cold chain industry is just a microcosm of the innovative development of characteristic industries in the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone.
The scale of financial leasing exceeds 2.1 trillion yuan, the total assets of commercial factoring companies account for 30% of the national total, the digital freight industry is accelerating aggregation, the value of bonded maintenance imports and exports exceeded 11.5 billion yuan last year, a green channel for urgently needed imported drugs was opened, the number of parallel imported cars leads the nation, and the export of used cars has risen sharply... In recent years, the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone has insisted on combining institutional innovation with industrial development, focusing on frontier emerging fields for in-depth exploration, maintaining a leading position in the nation in several industries, and frequently presenting highlights.
The scale of cross-border e-commerce consumption has further expanded, with JD International, Tmall International, and VIP.com all building the largest cross-border import full-category central warehouses in the northern region in Tianjin. Relying on the advantages of free trade institutional innovation, it has achieved same-day declaration and same-day shipment, with next-day delivery in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In 2023, the city achieved a cross-border e-commerce import and export of 35.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.7%. Parallel imported cars continue to lead the nation, with 36,000 imported parallel cars last year, accounting for more than 80% of the national total of parallel car imports.
To promote the development of advantageous industries, the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone focuses on planning guidance, policy empowerment, and chain layout, breaking through the bottlenecks of industrial development. For example, it explores innovative paths for cross-border segmented production of overseas biological products, implements innovative customs clearance models for integrated circuit wafers, and carries out integrated innovation of "frozen product processing + bonded display + centralized reporting and distribution," promoting the expansion of the bonded display transaction business scope to fields such as medical devices and biomedicine.
At the end of last year, the Ministry of Commerce and nine other departments issued the "Opinions on Improving the Development Level of Processing Trade," granting the Binhai New Area the latest policy for "both ends outside" bonded maintenance pilot, expanding the bonded maintenance policy originally limited to comprehensive bonded areas to the entire Binhai New Area.
In the field of digital trade, Tianjin established a linkage innovation demonstration base at the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center, becoming the first national data industrialization linkage innovation demonstration base, taking the lead in stimulating the vitality of data elements, and proposing the "Tianhe" model for data application. It released the first data classification and grading standard specification in the national free trade pilot zone, providing guidance for enterprises in the free trade pilot zone to carry out data classification and grading, promoting the safe and orderly flow of enterprise data, and strengthening, optimizing, and expanding the digital economy.
Sun Jiannan, Director of the Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Commerce and Director of the Tianjin Free Trade Pilot Zone Promotion Work Leading Group Office, said that Tianjin will continue to increase the intensity of project introduction and cultivation, improve the level of industries, continuously consolidate the first-mover advantage of bonded maintenance, and promote the aggregation and upgrading of high added-value industries such as aviation, marine engineering equipment, and medical manufacturing.