Tianjin's Binhai embraces opening-up and expands foreign ties

Tianjin Port

Tianjin’s Binhai New Area has been committed to upgrading and unleashing the potential of the free trade pilot zone, spearheading opening up and free trade, and providing effective experience to other places.

Foreign enterprises, such as FAW Toyota, Novo Nordisk, Nestle, and GE, remain upbeat about investment prospects in Binhai with an increase in capital. In the first three quarters of this year, Binhai’s actual use of foreign capital increased to $4.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 38 percent.

Binhai has taken the lead in removing access restrictions in some high-end equipment manufacturing fields, furthering free trade, and making negative lists based on its own needs.

Relying on the local real economy, Binhai has developed a bonded economy, platform economy and offshore economy, and is encouraging its bonded services to cover more domains, such as R&D and design, processing and manufacturing, logistics, maintenance, and sales.

Giving full play to its port and airport facilities, Binhai actively taps domestic market and expands foreign trade, being represented by several flagship cooperation projects, such as the China-Egypt TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone. Three China-Europe freight trains shipped 72,000 TEUs in the first three quarters, an increase of 80.2 percent.

Tianjin Port has set up 26 inland dry ports and 19 inner branch lines, covering major ports around the Bohai Sea. In addition, Binhai has upgraded the services of its port, providing enterprises with more professional services, such as customs declaration, transportation, settlement, and law, and helping enterprises to reduce costs.

The coastal district has applied intelligent approval and supervision, which reduces the time for importing and exporting, and has also optimized more green channels to enable the smoother import of many goods, including urgently needed drugs.

Binhai has landed the Southeast Asian Human Resource (Tianjin) Service Center, the first of its kind in northern China. It has also established a green channel for the cross-border travel of international high-end talents, and formulated a broader list of overseas vocational qualifications.

The scale of financial leasing business in Binhai accounts for 1/3 of that in China, and will also explore its offshore financial business model in the future.