HAIKOU, August 23. /TASS/. By 2035, the Chinese authorities intend to turn the port city of Yangpu in the northwest of Hainan Island into a key point for distributing the flow of goods from various Chinese regions to Southeast Asia and Oceania, Europe and North America. As stated in the "Comprehensive Plan for the Formation of a New Integrated Sea and Land Corridor" of the State Committee for Development and Reform of China, the project aims to accelerate and increase the effectiveness of regional and global trade and economic projects, to provide advanced customs and logistics services.
The new zone will be a unique transboundary area. It will connect the northern regions of China bordering with Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia with the southern part of the country, providing them access to the territory of the ASEAN member-states. Due to this, and also thanks to the planned simplification of customs the administrative-territorial units of China with a relatively low gross regional product, for example, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, will be involved in global trade.
The free port of Yangpu in this corridor will play an important part. In 2020, the volume of cargo transported through the port will exceed 1 million standard containers and will continue to increase in the future. By 2025, it will be able to turn into a regional transportation hub. Further, up to 5 million containers per year will be transported through the port, while the Beibuvan port zone, separated from it by the strait, will be able to pass up to 10 million containers. This will relieve the ports of Shanghai and Shenzhen, which now account for the main transshipment of goods sent to the countries of Southeast Asia.
In recent years, the Yangpu port has become a major logistics hub, which plays an increasingly important role in the regional maritime transportation system. Its development, the portal points out, contributes to the improvement of the business environment in Hainan and the implementation of the project to create an experimental free trade zone in the province. Local authorities intend to continue to improve the port's infrastructure, increase its competitiveness and openness, increase container traffic, and open new routes for them.
The Hainan authorities have been actively working on the construction and promotion of a pilot free trade zone, the creation of which the President of China Xi Jinping announced in April 2018 at the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the island province and the Hainan Special Economic Zone. According to plan, the creation of a pilot zone will start the globalization of the island's economy and increase the attractiveness of the Chinese province for foreign investors.