BEIJING, APRIL 11, ARMENPRESS. Sometimes referred to as the “Hawaii of China,” Hainan, the country’s southernmost province, is a tropical island paradise with golden sandy beaches, palm trees, five-star hotels, entertainment venues and cultural landmarks, making it the ideal getaway destination.

Unsurprisingly, tourism is indeed a major sector in the province. (Armenian citizens are eligible for free-visa travel to China).

But aside from being a tourism hotspot, the island is also China’s biggest special economic zone and the host of the Boao Forum for Asia, which is in turn known as the "Asian Davos". Hainan is now transforming itself into the world’s largest free trade port.

The province has a tropical monsoon oceanic climate and an abundance of sunlight: an ideal place for growing crops. Moreover, among the more than 4,000 kinds of plants found on the island, about 2,000 can be used as medicine, accounting for 40% of China’s variety of medicinal herbs and earning Hainan the crown as the country’s “natural medicine storehouse.”

Hainan FTP, the island-wide free trade port, is China’s largest, most open platform, with the country’s most favorable policies centering around zero tariffs, low tax rates, and a simplified tax system.

The annual average growth rate of paid-in foreign investments in Hainan in the past five years was 63,3%. In 2022, capital flow through Hainan free trade accounts amounted to over 35 billion dollars. In the past five years alone, the increase in market players in Hainan surpassed that of the 30 years following the province’s establishment. The three future industries of “Land” (seed breeding), “Marine” (deep-sea science and technology) and “Aerospace” (aerospace science and technology) are witnessing rapid growth in the Hainan FTP.

“We have put in place an FTP policy system featuring facilitation and liberalization for the flow of trade, investment, cross-border capital, personnel and transport, and the secure and orderly flow of data,” Governor of Hainan Liu Xiaoming said at a press conference in Beijing on April 11. “During his visit to Hainan in 2022, President Xi Jinping restated the importance of accelerating the development of Hainan into an FTP with Chinese characteristics and global influence in a bid to make Hainan the epitome of China’s reform and opening up in the new era and the Hainan FTP a shining Chinese model in the world.”

In 2023, Hainan registered the fastest growth rates nationwide, with GDP increase of 9,2%. Now, local authorities are preparing for “island-wide special customs operations.” The gross regional product of Hainan Province in 2023 was over 104,3 billion USD.

Local authorities are attaching great importance to environmental protection, and the proportion of clean energy installations and new energy vehicles ownership in Hainan are significantly higher than the national average.

Starting from 2030, Hainan will ban the sale of fossil fuel vehicles. Hainan’s Top 5 tourism products are retail tourism, healthcare and wellness tourism, marine tourism, cultural tourism and sport tourism.

This article has been written within the framework of the China International Press Communication Center (CIPCC) 2024 media exchange program.