Photo taken on April 5, 2021 shows Lingshui Li'An international education innovation pilot zone in Li'An peninsula of Lingshui Li Autonomous County, south China's Hainan Province. (Xinhua/Guo Cheng)
INVESTMENT MAGNET
The construction of the Hainan free trade port has unleashed a slate of favorable policies for market entities.
On April 8, China released a guideline to support the easing of market access in sectors including culture, medical services and education in the Hainan free trade port, among other efforts to build the province into a globally influential, high-level free trade port by the middle of the century.
Direct foreign investment grew from 340 million U.S. dollars in 2017 to 3.03 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, and the number of new foreign-invested companies expanded to nearly three times the number in 2019, according to the provincial government.
"We are confident in Hainan as the local government has provided us with much support, and we are convinced that the country has great potential for high-quality development as it consistently furthers opening-up," said Woody Lam, managing director of Savills Southern China.
Since April 2018, 40 centrally administered state-owned enterprises have also established strategic cooperative partnerships with Hainan, and the number of new private companies totaled 307,400 in 2020, up 28.3 percent over the previous year.
Shanghai-headquartered Fosun International Limited has for 25 years been ramping up its layout on the island in sectors including tourism.
"We will introduce more quality global industries into the development of the Hainan free trade port using our global supply chain to sustain high-quality development," said Guo Guangchang, chairman and executive director of the company, at the expo.
