The trendsetters stand towards the waves. In 2024, Zhejiang Free Trade Zone celebrates its seventh a

In March 2017, the State Council approved the overall plan of the China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone, and the China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone was officially established, located entirely in Zhoushan. It is also the only free trade zone in the country consisting of land and sea anchorages. On August 30, 2020, the State Council approved and announced the "Expansion Plan for China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone". The Zhejiang Free Trade Zone is the first in the country to expand from Zhoushan to Ningbo, Hangzhou, and Jinyi areas, forming a pattern of "one zone, four areas" coordinated development.

Adhering to the path of differentiation and specialization, daring to experiment, boldly explore, and independently reform, the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone has gradually become a "leading zone" for institutional innovation, injecting surging momentum into the high-quality development of the Chinese economy. In 2022, the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone contributed less than 1/400 of the province's total area to 20.6% of Zhejiang's foreign trade and 18.1% of foreign investment. Around the major reform pilot projects, various provincial departments in Zhejiang have issued more than 30 policy documents, with a total of 477 institutional innovations in each region, 149 national pioneering institutional innovations, 11 selected for the State Council's replication and promotion list, and 5 selected as "best practice cases" in the State Council's free trade zones.

From 'not producing a drop of oil' to 'the entire oil and gas industry chain'

At the Meishan Port terminal of Zhoushan Port in Ningbo, the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) refueling ship, "Haiyang Petroleum 301", slowly approached the dual fuel ship "Dafei United" that was loading and unloading containers at the terminal, and refueled the container ship with bonded LNG fuel through a hose. This is a landmark project for the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone to expand and strengthen the entire oil and gas industry chain, and enhance its ability to allocate oil and gas resources.

The leap from "not producing a drop of oil" to the initial formation of a "trillion level oil and gas industry pattern" is a true reflection of the oil and gas industry in the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone.

Especially in the areas of oil and gas refining, storage and transportation, trade, and settlement, the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone has formed a series of distinctive innovative achievements, such as non-state-owned import qualifications and quotas for crude oil, non-state-owned export qualifications and quotas for refined oil products, decentralization of bonded refueling licenses for international navigation vessels, and blending of bonded fuel oil. These are all pioneering achievements in China and have made positive contributions to the market-oriented reform of China's oil industry, "said Hu Zhenfang, Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Free Trade Office and Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce.

In the seven years since its establishment, the Zhoushan area of the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone has accumulated 269 innovative achievements and practical cases of characteristic systems, with 125 being the first in the country and 32 being replicated and promoted nationwide. It has built the largest petrochemical base in the country and the second largest in the world, the largest energy security base in the country, and the largest oil and gas trading port in the country.

Building an international shipping and logistics hub

After the expansion, based on the advantages of openness and industry, we aim to create an international shipping and logistics hub, which has become one of the newly added functional positioning of the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone. On the basis of differentiated exploration, each region is developing in a coordinated manner to accelerate the construction of a fast and efficient logistics network.

Last year, Ningbo Zhoushan Port achieved an annual cargo throughput of over 1.25 billion tons, ranking first in the world for 14 consecutive years; Completed a container throughput of 33.35 million TEUs, ranking third in the world.

The number of "Yixin Europe" train routes has increased to 22, making it the most market-oriented, overloaded, operated, crossed the most countries, traveled the longest, and had a high return rate China Europe train.

The construction of international shipping and logistics hubs is booming, and the "Sixth Port Area" has emerged. The Zhejiang Free Trade Zone fully leverages its collaborative role to break through bottlenecks, innovate the port supervision chain, and establish a "Sixth Port Area" in Yiwu. Export goods entering the "Sixth Port Area" are treated as entering Ningbo Zhoushan Port, achieving "one declaration, one inspection, and one release" for customs clearance, greatly improving efficiency.

More and more overseas goods are entering from the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone, and more and more Chinese products are leaving here, with the saying 'buy globally, sell globally'.

Digital empowerment unleashes infinite vitality

Zhejiang is a pioneer in the digital economy, and the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone naturally needs to make good use of this advantage.

Since the expansion of the zone, Zhejiang has actively promoted the construction of a digital free trade zone, proposing eight reform exploration directions, including the classification and grading of cross-border mobile data, the construction of data trading platforms, data intellectual property rights, the application of digital RMB, the "single window" for digital trade, and the negative list for cross-border service trade.

The dual empowerment of numbers and free trade unleashes unlimited vitality in reform and innovation. In March of this year, the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone released the "Action Plan for Enhancing the Development of China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone (2023-2027)", which clearly stated that it will build a leading digital economy industry system, take the lead in integrating high standard digital trade rules, and promote the establishment of a data infrastructure system. Strive to increase the cross-border e-commerce import and export volume to 420 billion yuan, the digital service trade volume to 250 billion yuan, and maintain a growth rate of over 8% in the core manufacturing industry of the digital economy by 2027.

Born from openness and prospered through reform. Nowadays, the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone is accelerating the construction of oil and gas free trade zones represented by Zhoushan, hub free trade zones represented by Ningbo, digital free trade zones represented by Hangzhou, and commercial free trade zones represented by Jinyi, striving to achieve more transformative practices, breakthrough progress, and landmark achievements, and exporting more "Zhejiang experience" to the whole country.