"Head goose" flies out of "acceleration" for ten years

In 10 years, enough for a child to grow into a teenager, enough for a sapling to stand tall like a canopy. In 10 years, the promotion and implementation of a national strategy is enough to shape the development pattern of a city and demonstrate the firm determination of a major country.

In September 2013, China's Pilot Free Trade Zone was established. Over the past 10 years, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has actively participated in international competition on behalf of Shanghai and China, continuously promoted institutional innovation, and built the main institutional framework of a higher-level open economic system. It has also embarked on a development path that closely combines expanding opening up with reforming the system.

Today, when the 21 pilot free trade zones and the Hainan Free Trade Port in China have formed an opening-up matrix covering the east, west, north, south, and central regions, and when more than 300 reform experiences from the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone have been replicated and promoted nationwide at different levels and fields, looking back at the past, we can still see through the past 10 years of Shanghai, the inherent logic behind China's free trade strategy of promoting reform and development through opening up, the confidence of China in going global, and the determination of China to open up to the outside world.

Over the past 10 years, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council have attached great importance to the construction of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, and have successively approved four overall plans:

In September 2013, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone was established, and the overall plan approved by the State Council clearly covered 28.78 square kilometers of the original Shanghai Comprehensive Bonded Zone, consisting of four customs special supervision zones: Waigaoqiao Bonded Zone, Waigaoqiao Bonded Logistics Park, Yangshan Bonded Port Area, and Pudong Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone.

In April 2015, the expansion of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone was launched, and the "Deepening Plan" approved by the State Council clearly expanded the implementation scope to 120.72 square kilometers.

In March 2017, the Comprehensive Deepening Plan approved by the State Council clarified the construction tasks of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone until 2020.

In August 2019, the State Council issued the "Overall Plan for the Lingang New Area", which specified the establishment of new areas south of the Dazhi River, east of Jinhui Port, as well as in the areas south of Xiaoyangshan Island and Pudong International Airport, with a pilot area of 119.5 square kilometers. Undoubtedly, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone is getting bigger and bigger.

The expansion of physical space also reflects the changes in the scale of China's openness - the door to China's openness is becoming larger and larger. In 2013, bidding farewell to the inexperienced past as a knock on the WTO door, China has transformed from a "transfer student" in international trade to an "excellent student". Standing at the critical juncture of BIT negotiations, China has thrown out the olive branch of major country openness through the implementation of its free trade strategy and actively aligned with international economic and trade rules.

Over the past 10 years, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has improved its market access management methods, and the first pilot foreign investment "pre access national treatment plus negative list management system" has been included in the Foreign Investment Law; The pilot of the enterprise name registration notification commitment system, which was launched first, has increased the speed of enterprise name registration from "one day" before the reform to "real-time"; The pioneering international trade "single window" has launched the RCEP optimal tariff inquiry system, which comprehensively speeds up port clearance and reduces fees

This is not enough. Can we let it go, can we control it, and more importantly, can we effectively activate the market and enhance China's importance in the global resource allocation of market entities? The whole world is looking at China and Shanghai.

Over the past 10 years, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has successively implemented a number of national pioneering projects in 60 open fields, including foreign-funded public funds, foreign-funded reinsurance legal entities, and foreign-controlled securities companies. Especially in open fields such as medical services, value-added telecommunications, international ship management, vocational skills training, performance brokerage, tourism services, and foreign-funded engineering design, a group of leading enterprises have been introduced from point to surface, forming a clustering effect. As of June this year, there were 435 regional headquarters of multinational corporations in Pudong New Area, where the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone is located, accounting for 47% of the city's total.

Of course, we should see the transformation of open structures through data. The 10-year free trade construction is not as simple as adding a few multinational companies. China's opening up has gone from the early opening up of goods trade to a higher level and more systematic integration of service trade under the free trade strategy, and towards a deeper level of institutional opening up.

The "Offshore Platform" is the first auxiliary information platform in China that directly integrates overseas data to support trade authenticity verification, launched in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone. Relying on its functions, the offshore transaction revenue and expenditure of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone have been increasing year by year, accounting for more than 90% of the city's total. Shanghai has thus become an important functional node for multinational corporations to layout global industrial resources.

Today, as we re-examine the new urban pattern under the free trade strategy, it is not difficult to find that the 10-year reform and innovation have fundamentally reconstructed the governance system of Shanghai.

The Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has shifted from a supply side mindset in policy formulation to a demand side mindset. It has promoted the implementation of the "one industry, one certificate" reform, established a cross national, municipal, and district level industry licensing system, and truly achieved the convenience of only obtaining one industry comprehensive license for each industry.

In order to further save the time and economic costs of market entities, in recent years, Shanghai has begun to explore the establishment of a market admission commitment system based on the integrity of market entities. Market entities from 22 industries can apply online and start business with a certificate on the same day. The acceleration of certification brings a sense of achievement to micro entities by reducing running away and achieving success, while it brings greater regulatory challenges during and after the event to managers. It is a disruptive transformation of government functions.

Standing in 2023, we may not be able to anticipate the direction of economic globalization and geopolitical landscape in the next decade, but we can be confident that China's proposed free trade strategy and open system based on its own needs will not be blocked or shaken. Because over the past 40 years, China's economic development has been achieved under open conditions, and in the future, China's high-quality economic development will also be carried out under more open conditions.