This year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone. Amid significant shifts in the global trade landscape, the Zone has served as a critical experiment ground for China’s reform and opening-up efforts. It plays a pivotal role in helping the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area navigate the complexities of the international trade environment.
Spanning Guangzhou’s Nansha New Area, Shenzhen’s Qianhai Shekou Area, and Zhuhai’s Hengqin New Area, the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone has, over the past decade, launched 772 institutional innovations. Of these, 237 have been replicated across the province, and 43 have been promoted nationwide—representing a quarter of all such initiatives in the country. The Zone has released 356 cases of system innovation, with 8 selected as national best practices, accounting for nearly one-tenth of the national total.
On April 21, the Opinions on Implementing the Strategy of Upgrading Free Trade Pilot Zones were released, emphasizing the importance of this strategy in advancing high-level opening-up and high-quality development. Earlier, the Ministry of Commerce held a special press conference announcing plans to strengthen tailored guidance for various Pilot Free Trade Zones. It also committed to expanding the reform agenda for zones in Guangdong, Tianjin, and Fujian, assigning new pilot reform tasks. Qualified zones will be supported in pursuing integrated innovation across key sectors such as biomedicine, advanced equipment manufacturing, and the marine economy.
“The Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone has evolved from a focus on institutional innovation to a new phase centered on industrial innovation,” said Mao Yanhua, dean of the Institute of Regional Openness and Cooperation at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
Reconstructing the global supply chain through regional linkage
In 2025, the global foreign trade landscape remains complex and volatile, with the international supply chain undergoing a new round of restructuring. Amid these shifts, a pressing question emerges: how can the security and stability of industrial and supply chains be strengthened?
The Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone offers a strategic answer—leveraging institutional innovation to accelerate the agglomeration of production factors and foster the development of a modern industrial system. According to the Department of Commerce of Guangdong Province, over the past decade, the Zone has maintained an average annual growth rate of over 24% in foreign trade imports and exports. Meanwhile, cumulative fixed asset investment has exceeded 1.3 trillion RMB, averaging more than 130 billion RMB annually.
This context underpins China’s Ministry of Commerce’s initiative to support qualified Pilot Free Trade Zones in pioneering integrated innovation across entire industry chains. Over the past ten years, the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone has promoted the clustered growth of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries through market liberalization and targeted industrial policy support. Today, the three sub-zones—Nansha, Qianhai Shekou, and Hengqin—are exploring differentiated development paths to advance institutional innovation and build a modern industrial system with distinct characteristics.
For instance, the Nansha Area has established a robust industrial system anchored by clusters in heavy equipment, shipbuilding, and marine engineering. Advanced manufacturing now contributes over 70% of the value-added output of large-scale industries in the region. With a focus on emerging sectors such as intelligent connected vehicles, marine science and technology, and artificial intelligence, Nansha has nurtured leading enterprises like Pony.ai and CloudWalk.
The Qianhai Shekou Area is accelerating the development of 18 modern service industry clusters, including bulk commodities, financial leasing, financial services, tax services, and tech services. It is positioning itself as a pilot zone for international financial openness and a key hub for global trade in services.
Meanwhile, the Hengqin Area is serving as a new platform for diversifying Macao’s economy. It is advancing the pillar industries: high-tech R&D and advanced manufacturing, Macao-branded sectors such as traditional Chinese medicine, integrated development of culture, tourism, exhibitions, and trade, and the modern financial industry.
Clearly, institutional innovation in Nansha, Qianhai, and Hengqin has fostered the emergence of concentrated industry chains. These clusters not only reduce supply chain costs by attracting high-end resources but also facilitate knowledge sharing and collaborative innovation, accelerating breakthroughs in key technologies.
As the trade tensions initiated during the Trump administration continue to escalate, the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone must now focus on attracting more high-end resources, fostering synergies among related industries, and enhancing industrial cluster effects. This, in turn, will boost the Greater Bay Area’s overall economic competitiveness and resilience.
“Over the past decade, we prioritized building institutional frameworks that support investment facilitation, financial liberalization, an optimized business environment, and transformed government functions. This laid the groundwork for the Zone to become a frontier for institutional innovation,” Mao said. “Now, the goal is to translate this institutional advantage into real economic momentum—setting a regional benchmark for high-quality development, advancing innovation-driven industries, and accelerating the formation of a modern industrial system.”
High-level opening up to the outside world “Golden Triangle”
According to Guangdong Branch of the General Administration of Customs, the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone recorded 749.39 billion RMB in import and export in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 25.6%, accounting for 8.2% of Guangdong’s total foreign trade and contributing 1.8 percentage points to the province’s overall trade growth. As a gateway for high-level opening, the Zone’s institutional innovation and supportive policies have empowered enterprises to engage more deeply in the global division of labor.
Since its establishment ten years ago, the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone has continuously advanced customs supervision reform. With Nansha and Shekou Ports as central hubs, the “Combined Port” and “One Port” models have significantly reduced logistics costs—by over 200 million RMB. The “Single Window” for international trade, launched ahead of the nation, has become a national benchmark. Nansha and Qianhai have been recognized as national demonstration zones for import trade innovation, with distribution and consolidation trade surpassing 200 billion RMB.
In the first quarter of 2024 alone, Nansha’s trade volume exceeded 63.4 billion RMB, a 25.6% year-on-year rise, underscoring its growing role as a high-standard global trade hub. Cross-border e-commerce has also surged, with Nansha’s annual trade rising from just 0.2 billion RMB in 2014 to 46 billion RMB in 2024—ranking first among national bonded areas.
Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone has also led financial innovation. It was the first to pilot the opening of the financial sector, hosting Hong Kong-funded fund firms, dual-license banks, and fully foreign-funded futures companies. Nansha launched a white-list system for offshore trade, creating an integrated offshore trade platform that achieved a balance-of-payments scale of $2.85 billion in 2024. With rising uncertainty in global trade, offshore and digital trade have become critical tools for lowering costs and boosting competitiveness, aligning with the broader Belt and Road strategy.
Qianhai Shekou is emerging as a demonstration base for financial sector opening and global service trade. The “30 Articles of Financial Support for Qianhai” have already yielded 14 national firsts—such as foreign exchange purchase without physical entry—and fostered six types of cross-border financial innovations, including RMB cross-border loans. These have established a unique brand of “six cross-border” financial reforms.
Hengqin has advanced modern finance by issuing offshore RMB bonds and enabling cross-border asset transfers to Macao’s leasing companies. Its multifunctional free trade EF account system has processed over 110 billion RMB in transfers, reinforcing financial connectivity with Macao.
Mao stressed that China’s Pilot Free Trade Zones must serve dual roles: aligning with international high-standard trade rules while exporting China’s institutional strengths. Sectors like new energy vehicles, high-speed rail, and cross-border e-commerce have accumulated substantial domestic experience, and now face the task of shaping global standards.
Source: 21st Century Business Herald, Xinhua, HKTDC Research, Macao News, CGTN
