HAIKOU, December 30. /TASS/. On the eve of the upcoming 2021, the Island of Hainan has summed up the main results of socio-economic development over the past 12 months. Key events in the region were published as a photo gallery by the province's leading newspaper "Hainan Daily".
"The year 2020 was not an easy year: its beginning was marked for Hainan by the fight against the pandemic, followed by measures to restore production and other economic activity," observers of the publication note. "In the middle of the year, the authorities published the General Program for Hainan's Free Trade Port and began to implement new strategic measures".
At the end of 2020, as the newspaper notes, there were no less significant changes. For example, the launch from the Wenchang cosmodrome of the newest Chinese launch vehicle Changzheng-8 and the Change-5 unmanned reentry vehicle, as well as the Third Hainan International Film Festival.
Cruise vacation
The first significant event for the island in 2020 was the opening of a cruise route from Sanya to Vietnam with a tour of Halong Bay and the resort town of Danang in the central part of the Indochina Peninsula. The transportation of tourists was provided by such liners as Costa neoRomantica with a displacement of about 57,000 tonnes, capable of organizing the transportation of about 1,800 passengers at a time.
However, in the future, due to the pandemic, Hainan's tourism hit pause in this direction. Cruises resumed only 11 months later: now those willing are offered to make a sea voyage in the waters of the South China Sea, visiting the Xisha archipelago (Paracel Islands). The resumption of cruise travel is expected to accelerate the recovery of the tourism industry, which in China has been hit by the pandemic more than any other industry.
Fight against the coronavirus
The most intense fight against the epidemic on Hainan unfolded in January-February. The authorities took the toughest and effective measures, quickly containing local outbreaks of this dangerous infectious disease. At the same time, the provincial administration actively helped other regions of China, primarily the city of Wuhan, where a new type of coronavirus was first recorded.
The right strategy of the Hainan authorities helped to completely stabilize the situation on the island by March. According to statistics, since February 20, there has not been a single local case of infection, which allowed to launch the process of rapid economic recovery.
At the end of February, the Hainan government began to strengthen and build up foreign economic ties. Special attention was paid to the development of twin city relations with cities of other countries. Amid the difficult epidemic situation in the world, the island constantly provided them with active support. Thus, from March to May alone, the province sent abroad medical equipment, hundreds of thousands of masks and other materials to 23 states, with the cities of which this southern China region has close friendly relations.
Restoration of educational and work processes
In April, Hainan schoolchildren returned to classes, continuing their studies after a forced break. At the same time, the authorities continued to work on solving a number of social development tasks, in particular, on environmental protection. Among the important steps, the local news outlet mentions measures to improve the environment in Haikou's new Jiangdong District. This project was launched in April and is expected to be completed in the coming 2021.
Moreover, the government continued to implement a whole package of measures to improve soil quality, optimize water and air resources. Hainan has been particularly successful in the area of waste disposal over the recent months. In July, Sanya introduced a smart waste classification system, and since August, all government agencies, educational institutions, hospitals, large shopping malls and markets, as well as many residential areas have joined the self-sorting program for expired or broken goods before they go to dumps.
An important innovation was the introduction from December 1 of a ban on disposable products made of non-degradable plastic island-wide.
Trade and economy
A major event took place in Hainan on June 1, when the provincial leadership announced the region's development strategy for the coming years. Infrastructure construction was announced as one of the key areas for growth, as before. Around this time, a notable achievement was the expansion of Meilan International Airport in Haikou, which announced the successful testing of a new runway.
The province also made a big breakthrough in promoting sales in the local duty free stores in the offshore zone, which have sold goods worth more than 31.58 billion yuan (about $ 4.82 billion) since the beginning of the year. Five new duty free shops are already opening on the island, three in Sanya and two in Haikou, the local authorities said.
With the release of Hainan Free Trade Port's General Program, 16 key development zones were established in 11 different areas of the province in early June. All these innovations took place with the direct participation of the provincial administration's top officials, who made a number of visits to learn more about the situation on the ground.
The special customs zone of the Yangpu port on the west coast of the island also played an important role in the economic development of Hainan in 2020. There, at the end of September, a transcontinental container route to Oceania and Australia was opened.
Technology and innovation
According to the local authorities, the main topics in Hainan's scientific life were such events as the expedition of the research vessel "Tanso-1" with the deep-water bathyscaphe Fendouzhe ("Fighter") on board to the most powerful tectonic fault on our planet — the Mariana Trench. In addition, the Wenchang cosmodrome has successfully launched the latest satellites and spacecraft for Moon and Mars exploration.
In August, the Hainan administration published the Smart Hainan 2020-2025 Island Innovation Development Program, under which the province will soon be implementing more than 30 infrastructure projects aimed at developing fifth-generation 5G communications networks, the Internet of Things and information and communications services.
Culture and sports
In November, Hainan hosted the Twenty-First International Tourism Carnival, organized to better unleash the tourism potential of the Belt and Road Initiative and use interagency mechanisms to promote new products that are in high demand among tourists. This event was complemented by the Third Hainan International Film Festival, which started in early December and lasted for a week.
Over the past month, the province has hosted many cultural and recreational activities, including a beer festival that will wrap up in January 2021.
Hainan free trade port
On June 1, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council published the General Development Program for Hainan's Free Trade Port, according to which an effective mechanism to stimulate sustainable and long-term growth should be finally formed in Hainan by 2025. It is expected that thanks to new methods, many of which are being introduced in China for the first time, the province will be able to fulfill a number of key socio-economic tasks necessary to form a powerful financial and economic center in the country’s south. It is assumed that by 2035 both the economic and innovative potential of this region will be maximized, and it will become one of the most attractive places for international investors.
In April 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the launch of Hainan's project to build a pilot free trade zone. According to the authorities' plan, the creation of a pilot zone will give impetus to the processes of globalization of the island's economy and increase the attractiveness of the Chinese province for foreign investors.
It is expected that by 2050 Hainan will become a unique international cluster with an advanced economic system, which includes a free trade zone, campuses of the best universities, the most modern scientific laboratories and the headquarters of world corporations.