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Seeking growth from the sea and the sky, the free trade port has unlimited possibilities!

01

Prosperity due to the sea

Haikou, a city named after the mouth of the Nandu River where it flows into the sea, is probably a tourist city with beautiful scenery when people think of it.

A long time ago, this place was a "place of exile" that people avoided. However, the great talent Su Dongpo wandered all the way to Danzhou and found many new pleasures in life. He said:

"I am afraid that the gentlemen in the north will hear of this and will vie to do what Dongpo did, and ask to be exiled to Hainan to share this beauty with me."

He was afraid that outsiders would know about this great place.

When you open your eyes, you will see the blue sky, bright sunshine, cotton candy-like white clouds, and rainbows after the rain. These are all attractive enough and are hard to find in other cities.

Coconut breeze, sea breeze, blue sea and blue sky are the impressions that many people have of Haikou. Here, you can see green when you go out, you can see the scenery when you open the window, and you can see the sea when you turn the corner. Everywhere is lush and green.

The more densely populated the area, the more coconut trees can grow. People in Haikou say:

"Coconuts like people and enjoy their company."

Therefore, coconut trees are also a symbol of popularity.

Unlike the natural landscape that only depends on the weather, Haikou also has rich cultural landscapes.There are many historical and cultural relics here. More than a dozen countries have opened consulates, churches, chambers of commerce, banks...

The beautiful buildings on the Coastal Boulevard, the majestic Century Bridge, the green parks, the trails that run through the entire coastal coastline...

All of this reflects the city's taste.

What is even more commendable is Haikou’s complete tourism supporting facilities, whose “soft facilities” are second to none in the country.

This can be seen from the concerts held in Haikou. By establishing a multi-departmental collaborative mechanism, we can provide market entities with better and more convenient services throughout the entire process.

A dedicated 12345 hotline will be set up for every large-scale performance event, ensuring the viewing environment for citizens and tourists. Such comprehensive service is rare in China.

During the performance, by actively guiding the city's scenic spots, hotels, business districts, duty-free shops, etc. to carry out joint consumption promotion activities, and superimposing creative and trendy cultural and tourism activities, it attracted traffic and boosted consumption.

Haikou, where you can see the sea as soon as you step out of the door and there are delicious foods everywhere, has a pleasant climate, rich tourism resources and complete industrial supporting facilities, attracting a continuous influx of tourists from all over the world.

The full-chain service supply of "food, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, entertainment, shopping and maintenance" allows tourists to truly feel "respected" and "pampered", and makes the city's temperature the "traffic code" to attract tourists.

Looking at the international situation, Hainan Free Trade Port has preferential policies, visa-free entry for tourists from 59 countries, and international cultures are exchanged and interacted here.

Looking at the domestic situation, in 2023, Haikou's tourism industry showed a strong growth trend.

The number of tourists received throughout the year reached 23.95 million, compared with the previous year.Total tourism revenue increased by 31%.

This year, people are flocking to Haikou, and the heat wave is still going on. At the beginning of this year, Haikou received 1.8191 million tourists.Year-on-year growth of 30.5%, achieving tourism revenue of 2.75 billion yuan,Year-on-year growth of 52.6%.

This figure is undoubtedly the best affirmation of the development of Haikou's tourism industry.

02

Haikou, not just for tourism

In addition to its beautiful scenery, Haikou's industry is also developing well. Few people know that90% of China's pepper is produced in Hainan, and Hainan's largest pepper base is in Dapo, Haikou.

In 1954, overseas Chinese brought pepper seeds to Dapo from Southeast Asia. 70 years later, the pepper planting area in Dapo has reached 39,000 acres.

If coconut, rubber and betel nut are the three big trees of Hainan, then tea, pepper and coffee are the three small trees of Hainan. They are all important economic crops in Hainan and also constitute the beautiful scenery of Hainan.

It was only at this time that people realized that Haikou was far more than just a "travel destination" and that the outlines of various high-tech industries were beginning to emerge.

Some time ago, a list of companies was widely shared on WeChat Moments, attracting attention from all walks of life - Hainan released the list of the top 100 companies in Hainan Province in 2024. These companies are very valuable: their operating income in 2023 totaled 833.166 billion yuan, exceeding the GDP of Hainan Province that year.

The top 100 enterprises are the eye-catching “business card” and iconic “image” of regional development.

From the perspective of regional distribution, the provincial capital Haikou has 75 top 100 companies, making it the city with the highest concentration of top 100 companies in Hainan.

Why is it that Haikou is able to concentrate 75% of Hainan’s top 100 companies?

This is due to the fact that in recent years Haikou has anchored the development direction of its leading industries and built a modern industrial system with Haikou characteristics.

Haikou’s key industrial parks are important carriers of industrial development and the main means to promote new industrialization.

For example, the Guangdong-Hainan Advanced Manufacturing Cooperation Industrial Park. Just hearing the name, you know it has a great background. First, it is committed to industry, and second, it has the support of Guangdong, a major industrial province, which greatly increases the success rate.

There are more than 10 plots of land in the park. The west wing is the biopharmaceutical industry, which is the largest industrial cluster in Haikou. The east wing is the electronic information industry.It is a relatively weak industry in Haikou and also a dominant industry in Guangdong.

Ten well-known companies including Konka Group, China National Nuclear Corporation's subsidiary Atom Hi-Tech, and Shenzhen Kaili Medical have become the first batch of companies to move in.

This year, several electronic information manufacturing companies were introducedCross-provincial cooperation and enclave economy have greatly expanded the breadth of Haikou's industries.

Hainan Province Haikou Fuxing City Internet Information Industry Park, which was a restaurant street 10 years ago, has now become a key industrial park for Hainan Province's Internet information industry.The park’s revenue in 2023 will be 143.046 billion yuan.

The development of Fuxing City Industrial Park is a vivid epitome of the development of Haikou’s digital economy.

In addition, the Hainan Hangxin High-tech Industrial Park, with an initial investment of 2.1 billion yuan, started construction as soon as the land was acquired and was completed and put into production in just 18 months.

The chips produced by Hangxin are mainly used in new energy vehicles, energy storage, photovoltaic and wind power generation, industrial control and other fields.

As the main recipients of Hainan's free trade port policy and the main engine for building a modern industrial system, these industrial parks are the fastest-growing, most dynamic areas with the greatest investment and cooperation potential in Hainan.

It is through such a development platform that Haikou has proposed the development strategy of "strong industry" and has been able to smoothly promote the construction of new industrialization system engineering.

By 2023, the total industrial output value of Haikou above designated size will reach 88.51 billion yuan, an increase of 14.5%, achieving double-digit growth for three consecutive years. Among them, the output value of advanced manufacturing accounts for 79.1%.Become a pilot city for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In fact, ever since the introduction of the "Free Trade Port" policy, the local government has stepped up efforts to optimize the business environment, and the development of the real economy is imminent.

Biomedicine is a key "booster" for Haikou's sprint.

In order to break the bottleneck of new industrialization development, make up for shortcomings and strengthen strengths, Haikou has recently revised and upgraded the existing pharmaceutical industry policies. Benchmarking the policies of advanced pharmaceutical industry regions such as Shandong, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta, combined with the policy advantages of the Free Trade Port, based on the local situation, guide pharmaceutical companies to increase R&D investment and enhance endogenous motivation.

Standard factory buildings are rising one after another, leading pharmaceutical companies are flocking in, and scientific research results are accelerating their transformation...Take the Haikou National Hi-Tech Zone, where the most enterprises are concentrated, for example. The zone has 89 bio-pharmaceutical companies, and its scale has risen to 30th place among the 386 bio-pharmaceutical industrial parks in the country.

Haikou has not only made breakthroughs in the pharmaceutical industry, aviation, machinery and other fields, but also emerging industries such as artificial intelligence and new energy are booming.

If the economy is likened to a game of chess, industry is the "first shot", just like the opening move, which is an extremely powerful and important move in the development of the chess game.

If Haikou grasps the industry, it will be equivalent to grasping the hub of industrial linkage and the "bull's nose" to promote economic development.

One winning move saves the whole board.

This city, which prospered because of the sea, is moving from virtual to real and catching up on the lesson of industrialization.

03

Unlimited Possibilities Free Trade Port

In 1988, Hainan became the first province in the country to establish a special economic zone.It has thus become the youngest provincial capital.

In the early 1990s, this small island city took the lead in the real estate boom, and Pan Shiyi, Feng Lun and others started their careers here.

From a geographical point of view, it is like an "egg" laid by the "big rooster" of China, which fell on the vast South China Sea. In this sense, Hainan's mission is to turn this "egg" that fell on the South China Sea into a "pearl" in the South China Sea.

For a long time, the labels that represent Haikou in the public's eyes seem to be related to the environment and tourism, such as pleasant climate, good air, beautiful scenery, and extremely high green coverage.

Until the General Secretary visited Hainan three times, he personally planned, deployed andPromote Hainan to plan and promote reform and opening up with a higher position, broader vision and greater efforts.

Haikou’s geopolitical disadvantages in modern times were transformed into policy advantages overnight.

23.4%——This is the average growth rate of Hainan's import and export of goods in the past six years. In the first half of this year, Hainan's import and export of goods increased by 13.8% year-on-year, exceeding 130 billion yuan.

36.1%——This is the average annual growth rate of actual use of foreign capital in the Free Trade Port over the past six years, ranking among the top in the country.

99.5%——This is the proportion of days with good air quality in Hainan Province last year, reflecting the environmental quality, which has reached the best level in history...

Haikou is the biggest beneficiary of the implementation of Hainan’s free trade port policy and is also the most powerful implementer.

Riding on the trend of the free trade port, Haikou will hold various international exhibitions and conferences at an average rate of 1.7 per day in 2023.

The 2024 China International Consumer Goods Expo, the 2024 Melaleuca China Annual Meeting, the 2024 Free Trade Port Artificial Intelligence Technology Conference and AI Application and Robot Exhibition... were successively held in Haikou. Industry experts, scholars, and merchants from all over the world gathered in Haikou to discuss development plans, draw up an industrial blueprint, and seek win-win cooperation.

Organize a good exhibition, activate a chain, and enhance a city.Haikou is focusing on the concept of "exhibition +", turning traffic into "retention", making Haikou's "big exhibition, big business" a new growth point, and attracting companies from home and abroad to settle in!

Judging from the pharmaceutical industry that Haikou has focused on developing in recent years, the results have been quite good. Since the release of the "Overall Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port", biopharmaceutical projects of more than ten listed companies including Huaxi Biology and Xinhua Medical, and many top 100 pharmaceutical companies such as Yiling Pharmaceutical and Beite Pharmaceutical have been successively implemented in Haikou.

During the 2023 Shanghai International Biomedicine Industry Week alone, the Haikou National High-tech Zone Management Committee signed contracts with 21 pharmaceutical companies.

Successfully realize the transformation from exhibitors and conference participants to investors!

For these biopharmaceutical companies that have settled in Haikou, the business environment is the most direct consideration factor. The government's support and help have given business owners the most direct confidence.

In 2021, the Haikou Municipal Government introduced relevant policies to help Hainan pharmaceutical companies quickly gain access to local hospitals and commercialize their high-quality products.

In 2022, the Provincial Drug Administration formulated and implemented 21 measures to help enterprises and alleviate their difficulties, including encouraging R&D innovation, optimizing licensing procedures, improving approval efficiency, and strengthening government-enterprise services, to help enterprises improve quality and efficiency.

Subsequently, a package of industry supporting policies, including "Several Measures of Haikou City to Support the High-Quality Development of the Biomedicine Industry", were introduced to provide full-process, full-chain, and all-round policy support in preclinical research, clinical trials, consistency evaluation, results transformation, international certification, centralized procurement, and public service platform construction.

On August 1 this year, Haikou issued the "Several Regulations of Haikou City on Supporting the High-Quality Development of the Convention and Exhibition Industry".Through international exhibitions and international investment promotion, we will drive technological innovation and industrial transformation and upgrading, promote the structural adjustment and optimization of the urban economy, and further empower the development of industrial economy and new quality productivity.

These are all true reflections of Haikou's active embrace of the industrial revolution, opening up the global market, and integrating into the overall domestic and international development after the implementation of the free trade port policy.

Haikou has already sounded the prelude to its transformation from a major tourist city to a major economic and trading city.

In March this year, AVIC International Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. completed a bulk carrier financial lease and leaseback business with a Hong Kong shipping company through its financial leasing subsidiary established in Jiangdong New District, Haikou, namely, Air New Zealand Financial Leasing (Haikou) Co., Ltd., marking the official launch of Hainan Free Trade Port's first cross-border RMB settlement ship financial leasing business.

In early May this year, a Boeing 737-800 aircraft from Jeju Air of South Korea came to Hainan Free Trade Port's one-stop aircraft maintenance industrial base to receive special maintenance services provided by Daxinhua Aircraft Maintenance Service Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of HNA Technology. This is the first time that Hainan Free Trade Port has received maintenance business for inbound aircraft from South Korea.

From "first order" to "setting new records", from "trial first" to "multi-point blossoming"... In the past four years,Hainan’s free trade port policies are being continuously upgraded and their effectiveness released in Haikou, and the scope of its benefits is constantly expanding.

In fact, Haikou has had commercial genes since ancient times.

Haikou is located in Hai'an (now Hai'an, Guangdong) in the north, Jiaozhi (now northern Vietnam) in the south, Qizhou (now Qizhou Islands in Wenchang) in the east, and Hepu (now Beihai, Guangxi) in the west. Since ancient times, Haikou has been a key sea and land transportation hub in my country's southern border and an important port and commercial port.

Since its establishment as a port in the Northern Song Dynasty, Haikou has a history of more than a thousand years and enjoys the reputation of a national historical and cultural city.

The past six years of the Free Trade Port have been more like a return for Haikou.

By the end of 2023, the New Haigang Comprehensive Passenger Transport Hub, the country's largest port passenger and vehicle integrated hub, will be successfully built here, with an annual designed capacity of 35 million passengers and 5.6 million vehicles.

Haikou has added a new “first gateway hub” for the Qiongzhou Strait golden waterway.

Ports have existed since ancient times. Liu Yuxi of the Tang Dynasty once lamented:

"Look at the sand pan at the ferry crossing, how many people have been ferried across it."

In Li Qingzhao's writing, it is a different style:

"Struggling to cross the river, struggling to cross the river, startled a flock of gulls and herons."

For Liu Yong, it is:

"The orchid boat urges us to set off. We hold hands and look into each other's tearful eyes, unable to speak or feel anything."

Today's free trade port, with thousands of ships sailing, has shortened the distance between people and reduced our sadness of separation.But we have greater energy to develop large ports, large industries, large logistics, and large trade, and to build Haikou into a new highland for China's opening up to the outside world!