Shenyang FTZ boosts innovation, businesses

The Shenyang Area of the China (Liaoning) Pilot Free Trade Zone opened a display and trading platform for the maintenance and remanufacturing of bonded machine tools on June 22. It is the first platform of its kind in China.

The platform is an online tool that serves buyers, sellers, customs officials, financial institutions, transporters, and logistics and after-sales service providers in the industry.

It is seen as a significant institutional innovation that aims to optimize the business environment of the maintenance and remanufacturing industry, the local government said.

Inefficient and untimely information exchanges, miscellaneous transaction procedures and high transaction costs have been hindering the development of processing and manufacturing, logistics, equipment inspection, maintenance and sales service.

Because it can integrate industrial resources, the platform has so far been used by industry players from Germany, Japan, South Korea and more than 30 enterprises domestically.

At the same time, a bonded machine tools' maintenance and remanufacturing industrial park, covering an area of 20,000 square meters, kicked off construction recently. This year, the trade volume of the maintenance and remanufacturing business in the Shenyang FTZ is expected to reach 100 million yuan ($15 million).

In 2025, the production capacity of the industry is to reach an estimated 1,000 pieces with a turnover exceeding 1 billion yuan. This would drive the development of the maintenance and remanufacturing industry cluster hitting a value of around 10 billion yuan.

Using the trading platform and a group of offline industrial parks, the area will make efforts to optimize the service model of customs and encourage investment in key areas, officials said.

Those efforts will be constructive in creating a maintenance and remanufacturing industrial cluster serving high-end equipment, automobiles and aircraft.

It will also explore building the area into the country's first comprehensive pilot zone of the maintenance and remanufacturing industry.

Official data showed that in the first five months of this year, the area's foreign trade volume reached 5.4 billion yuan, up 132.8 percent year-on-year. The foreign trade volume at the comprehensive bonded zone in the area reached 4.5 billion yuan in the period, up 346.8 percent year-on-year.

The surging foreign trade volume can be attributed to the zone constructing multiple transport channels in recent years, officials said.

To explore the effective development of the cold chain industry, the zone developed a comprehensive transport system involving ships, trains and trucks, and opened up a fast cargo channel connecting Shenyang with some coastal ports. Currently, the system has been integrated into the transport network of Northeast China.

China-Europe freight trains are another focus. Last year, a China-Europe freight train debuted in Shenyang, making the city the first in Northeast China and the fourth nationally to explore a cross-border e-commerce and mail railway transport model.

In April, 187 artworks, such as oil paintings from Belgium, were transported to Shenyang on the freight train. It was the first batch of artworks shipped via the freight train in the country.

In 2020, Shenyang took the lead in opening three regular international charter freight flights, which connected Shenyang to London, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2021, another three international charter freight flights from Shenyang to Seoul, South Korea, and Almaty and Aktobe in Kazakhstan were opened.

This year, the zone will focus on serving BMW's global industrial chain and launch a charter freight flight connecting Shenyang with Europe, officials said.

In 2018, Shenyang was approved to be a cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone. In June 2019, the first cross-border e-commerce order was fulfilled in the area. Then in 2020, 1.72 million cross-border e-commerce orders were transacted. By 2021, the orders volume reached 18.2 million pieces.

Those are milestone achievements made in the area's cross-border e-commerce industry. In a comprehensive evaluation of the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones by the Ministry of Commerce, the area ranked first in the northeast.

This year, the zone will strive to develop the business-to-business service and overseas warehouse-related trade. Using the preferential opening-up policies, the area is planning an airport economic zone and aims to build itself into a transport hub connecting global cities, an airport demonstration area and a metropolis with a highly developed aviation industry.