More open market, facilitation measures helped: MOFCOM
The nation's four pilot free trade zones (FTZs) yielded "significant results" in the first nine months of the year, attracting more foreign companies and investment to China, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said Wednesday.
During the period, the pilot FTZs in Shanghai, South China's Guangdong Province, North China's Tianjin Municipality and East China's Fujian Province saw the entry of 4,639 new foreign companies and contracts worth 346.11 billion yuan ($54.6 billion), Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the MOFCOM, said at a press briefing in Beijing.
As of September 30, a total of 45,000 new companies had been set up in the Guangdong, Tianjin and Fujian FTZs, a year-on-year increase of 220 percent, Shen said.
The number of new foreign companies in Shanghai's pilot FTZ surged by 52.6 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of the year, while that number grew more than threefold in each of the other three pilot FTZs, according to Shen.
Shen attributed the progress to the ongoing opening-up of the nation's markets, trade and government moves to facilitate investment, as well as simplified registration procedures through the FTZs.
China approved plans to establish three pilot FTZs in Guangdong, Tianjin and Fujian in March, as well as improvements to the Shanghai FTZ, which was set up in September 2013, the Xinhua News Agency reported in March.
The FTZs were part of reforms intended to lead to a new, more open economic system, and explore a new model of regional economic cooperation, the Xinhua report said.
The numbers showed that the development of the four FTZs has led to "positive results," said Wang Jun, deputy director of the Department of Information at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
However, it is still too early to evaluate the overall success of the FTZs, Wang told the Global Times on Wednesday, noting that the pilot FTZs are still in the early stage of exploring and testing new reforms and policies, such as the "negative list" approach.
The State Council announced in April it would test a uniform "negative list" approach for all four FTZs, which would specify the sectors off-limits to foreign investors.
Bai Ming, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said that the "negative list" had been shortened multiple times since its introduction, and that trend would continue.
"It is a long process before opening up more sectors to foreign investors, because we have to take the reality in China into consideration," Bai told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Bai said that it is a positive trend for China to further open up and integrate into the international markets.
The "negative list" will be applied to the rest of the country as China pursues reform and adjusts its economic structure during the next Five-Year Plan (2016-20), he noted.
