On June 20, Peng Wei, deputy director of the Department of Commerce of Hainan Province, spoke at a press conference announcing the publication of a white paper on the development of the Hainan Free Trade Port. He said that since last year, Hainan has worked to overcome the challenges of the international trade environment and the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, Hainan has achieved remarkable results in foreign trade. In 2020, the value of imports and exports in the Hainan FTP reached 93.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3%, 1.1 percentage points higher than the national average growth rate. From January to May 2021, imports and exports reached a total value of 45.95 billion yuan, an increase of 19.7% over the same period of 2019 and a year-on-year increase of 38.5%, which was 10.3 percentage points higher than the national growth rate.

Hainan’s foreign trade had 5 notable results:

1. The optimization of the import/export commodity structure.

In 2020, automobile and spare auto part exports were valued at 795 million yuan, an increase of about 3.8 times, and medical material and medicine exports totaled 450 million yuan, an increase of 19%.

2. Duty-free goods have become the main factor driving Hainan's import growth.

In 2020, duty-free product imports were valued at 23.95 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80.5%, accounting for a quarter of the Hainan's total import value. From January to May of this year, 10.66 billion yuan of duty-free products have been imported, a year-on-year increase of 136.3%, accounting for about 31% of Hainan's total YTD imports.

3. The effectiveness of the new trade format.

Cross-border e-commerce has become a new bright spot in the development of foreign trade. In 2020, the 1.255 million cross-border e-commerce import orders reached a total value of over 500 million yuan, an increase of more than 5 times year-on-year. From January to May this year, there were 1.403 million cross-border e-commerce retail import orders valued at a total of 573 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 4.6 and 3.5 times respectively.

4. The rapid development of the emerging service trade.

In 2020, import and export of emerging services increased by 1.1 times year-on-year, much higher than the 22.89% of the previous year. From January to May this year, import and export of emerging services reached 7.148 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.15 times, accounting for 65.87% of the total service trade, and hitting a new record high. This included 6.447 billion yuan in import and export of digital services, a year-on-year increase of 3.7 times.

5. The export of special services has achieved remarkable results.

The Hainan Ecological Software Park and the Sanya Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital were listed on the first batch of national digital service export bases and the first batch of national Chinese medicine service export bases, respectively.