HAIKOU, June 10. /TASS/. The Chinese authorities intend to provide foreign airlines the right to conduct flights between Hainan and another country without landing at their country's airport, stated a message published on the website of the Civil Aviation Administration of China on Wednesday.
This right, unofficially called “seventh freedom of air” in international aviation, will be granted to foreign carriers as part of a project to create a free trade port on Hainan. Due to this right, for example, Italian airlines will be able to fly between this Chinese province and Indonesia's capital Jakarta without continuing further flight to Italy. At the same time, according to the department’s plans, the maximum number of passenger and cargo flights along each Hainan route will not exceed seven per week.
Since 2003, the third, fourth and fifth freedom of air of the International Civil Aviation Organization have been in force on Hainan allowing airlines to fly from their country to another, from another country to their own, as well as between two foreign countries with a visit to the airport of their country. Over the past 17 years, the number of international air routes on Hainan has increased from 5 to 103, air routes link this tropical island with Russia, Japan, South Korea, European and other countries.
From 2003 to 2019, the number of foreign tourists visiting Hainan over the year increased from 293,000 to 1.42 million, and the province's income from inbound tourism increased from 660 million to 6 billion yuan (approximately $ 850 million at current exchange rate).
Earlier, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Сhinese State Council published the “General Program for the Establishment of a Free Port on Hainan,” according to which the island’s administration intends to create an effective system to fulfill a number of important social and economic goals by 2025, and within 10 years to decisively enhance the innovative mechanisms for the region's development.
According to the program, the Chinese authorities intend to complete the creation of a free port on the territory of Hainan province by 2025: by this time, a system of free trade and investment should be set up on the island. In order to do so, the region will have to create advanced conditions for entrepreneurial activity in the country, increase the number of market entities, ensure free competition, and create the necessary legal mechanisms.
By 2035, the free port and its way of working should "become more mature." As indicated in the document, the work should be based on the principles of “freedom, justice, the rule of law and high-level control”. By this time, Hainan should ensure the freedom of trade and investment, cross-border movement of capital and people, and freight traffic. The state program emphasizes that "by the middle of this century" it is necessary "to create a fairly strong and influential high-level international free port" on Hainan.