Hainan free port, a trial around the Great Firewall of China
While the phone call between Trump and Xi Jinping is attracting the world's attention amid the Sino-US trade war, Beijing is moving forward with a project for large free trade zone on its southernmost island. To attract foreign investment, it is also launching a pilot project for direct access to the global Internet for authorised users and under state control.
Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) – For weeks now, the trade war between Washington and Beijing has dominated international news.
Today Chinese President XI Jinping and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, spoke by the phone “at the latter’s request,” reads a terse communiqué, picked up by various Chinese media, leading to all sorts of interpretations. But the trade tug-of-war is also being played at other levels.
Beijing is investing in trade zones, starting with Hainan, the island in southern China where it is building its largest free trade port. Once completed, goods will be able to enter and exit without customs duties, creating an ideal environment for trade, tourism and foreign investment.
The Chinese government's plan was first suggested in 2020 and is moving forward with the usually huge infrastructure investments (13.8 billion yuan, or over US$ 1 billion).
But that is not all. Today, the South China Morning Post reported interesting developments if read against the aforementioned background.
Hainan has begun experimenting with a pilot programme to grant some business users broad direct access to the global Internet, that is, unimpeded by the Great Firewall used in mainland China to block access to the most important Western search engines and apps.
Hainan, of course, is not moving toward a free-for-all that would eliminate censorship. But employees of companies registered and operating in the province can now apply for the “Global Connect” mobile service through the Hainan International Data Comprehensive Service Centre (HIDCSC), an agency controlled by the state-run Hainan Big Data Development Centre.
The programme allows eligible users to bypass the Great Firewall without using a VPN, which is illegal in China unless authorised.
Applicants, the South China Morning Post reports, must have a 5G plan with one of the three major state-run national carriers — China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom — and provide their employer’s information.
Once approved in a process that can take up to five months, they will be able to access sites like Google or YouTube, although some others, an anonymous HIDSCSC source said, will still be blocked.
HIDCSC also offers similar services to corporate clients, including e-commerce companies targeting overseas markets.
China has long maintained tight controls over Internet access, citing concerns about the spread of illegal or dangerous information.
According to past rumours, the Great Firewall could be abolished in free-trade zones, but such a move has largely gone unrealised, making the pilot project in Hainan a limited but significant exception.
It was here, after all, that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi outlined Beijing’s grand ambitions for the island last December. "Today's Hainan Free Trade Port has become a new frontier of China's institutional opening up, a new hot spot for regional mutually beneficial cooperation, and a new engine driving economic globalisation," Wang stated.
Hainan Provincial Governor Liu Xiaoming echoed the minister. “Over the past six years, Hainan's trade volumes in goods and services grew at an average annual rate of 22.2 per cent and 20.2 per cent respectively, while the actual utilisation of foreign investment grew at an average annual rate of 46 per cent. Hainan is currently making every effort to turn the whole island into a separate customs zone by the end of 2025, and then Hainan's openness will be elevated to a new level”.
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