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On August 20, the Lingang New Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone will celebrate its 3rd anniversary. Since its establishment, Lingang has accelerated the expansion of opening up, “testing the system, exploring new roads, and testing pressure” for the country, and accelerated the creation of special economic function zones and modern new towns with strong international market influence and competitiveness.
Lingang, the production workshop of Shanghai Rongrong New Material Co., Ltd. On the production line, the continuous alumina fibers extend continuously, with a maximum length of more than 4,000 meters.
“This metal fiber can withstand high temperatures above 1,500 degrees Celsius and is widely used in high-end manufacturing fields such as aerospace, semiconductors, and automobiles. At present, only a few companies in a few countries can produce it.” Guan Ketian, senior vice president and chief technology officer of the company, said, “We started production in Lingang within two years. In October this year, the company’s new 80,000-square-meter plant in Lingang was put into use, and the production capacity will be further enlarged.”
On August 20, the Lingang New Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone will celebrate its 3rd anniversary. Many entrepreneurs say, “In the past three years, I have accomplished a lot of things I wanted to do.”
Why is it possible to do things in Lingang?
Lingang, which is surrounded by the river and the sea, accelerates the expansion of opening up, and continuously explores for the country to “test the system, explore new roads, and test the pressure”, empower scientific and technological innovation through institutional innovation, and accelerate the shaping of enterprises with strong international market influence and competitiveness. Special economic function area and modern new city.
Up to now, 90% of the 78 tasks in the “Overall Plan for Lingang New Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone” have been completed, and more than 260 policies of various types have been issued by the state, Shanghai, and Lingang New Area, forming 87 Representative and leading institutional innovation cases, of which 36 are the first in the country.
Reshape the customs supervision process and improve the energy level of the Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone
Where are the “special functions” of Lingang? Wang Zhan, chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Social Sciences, believes that the Lingang New Area should recognize its “speciality” from the height of national strategy. Dare to break, dare to try, dare to change, in order to achieve its “special”.
Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone is the only special comprehensive bonded zone in my country. Shanghai Customs has systematically reshaped the customs supervision process based on the requirements of high-standard trade liberalization and facilitation, and pioneered a new supervision system of “first-line clearance, second-line one-sided declaration, and no customs account books in the area”.
“In the past, when goods were transported to Yangshan Port, they had to be declared before entering the zone. After the implementation of the new supervision model, enterprises do not need to declare at customs, but they are released directly, and the goods are directly brought into the Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone. This is for the relevant enterprises, especially the raw materials. It provides convenience for companies that sell both overseas and overseas,” said Wan Jun, director of the Shanghai Customs Free Trade Office. In the first half of this year, the number of batches of goods released through the first line of the Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone increased by 6 times compared with the same period last year.
Shanghai Customs has also creatively built a cross-border trade big data platform to promote the digital transformation of the management model, make it clearer about the flow of corporate materials, make data from “intangible” to “tangible”, and change supervision from “tangible” to “intangible”.
The bonded fuel market for ships on international voyages is an important indicator to measure the strength of the port’s supporting services, which directly affects the length of the ship’s berthing time and the derivative service functions of Yangshan Port. Taking advantage of the “experimental field” status of the Lingang New Area and the opening advantages granted by the state, 11 departments including the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce jointly launched the pilot management measures for the LNG bunkering of ships on international voyages in the Lingang New Area. In the end, Yangshan Port became the first port in the country and the third port in the world to provide bonded LNG “ship-to-ship” refueling for ships sailing internationally.
The implementation of innovative policies such as enterprise access and taxation to promote the agglomeration of frontier industries
Lingang strives to build four core industries of integrated circuits, biomedicine, artificial intelligence and civil aviation, two advantageous industries of high-end equipment manufacturing and intelligent new energy vehicles, and two future industries of hydrogen energy and green remanufacturing. Frontier industrial clusters with core technologies as breakthroughs. In the past three years, several major industries have achieved remarkable results in the agglomeration of the entire industry chain. Among them, the frontier technology industry has signed more than 300 projects, involving a total investment of over 420 billion yuan. The accumulation of resources at this speed benefits from a series of institutional innovations in Lingang.
The construction of the factory started in January 2019, and it was put into production that year. This is the speed of Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, also known as the “Lingang Speed”.
Lingang took the lead in the country to carry out the pilot program to strengthen the implementation of competition policy and the reform of the commercial system. Relaxing the prior control, improving the supervision during and after the event, Lingang took the lead in implementing the registration confirmation system of market entities, and promoted the registration of market entities from administrative licensing to administrative confirmation, and from substantive examination to formal examination, in order to reduce the institutional cost of market entity establishment .
Preferential taxation is a common feature of major free trade zones and free trade ports in the world. Benchmarking the world‘s most advanced free trade port tax system, the relevant departments in Shanghai have comprehensively analyzed the tax system arrangements of several special economic function zone cities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Rotterdam, and Dubai, and visited and listened to the opinions of more than 200 enterprises in Lingang. Finally, the Lingang tax reform framework report was formed, and a series of policies were successively issued by the State Administration of Taxation.
One of the important reasons for SenseTime to put the supercomputing center and smart car sector in Lingang is tax policy. “The 15% corporate income tax preference will positively affect the future layout of the company, and the 15% individual income tax preference for talents will increase the attractiveness of talents,” said Qian Qianying, executive director of finance of Shangtang Technology Group.
Tax policy has become an important growth engine for the Lingang New Area to accelerate high-quality development. Over the past three years, the Lingang New Area has registered over 63,000 new companies, with an average of about 90 new companies being established every day. In 2021, the introduction of domestic talents will increase by 216% year-on-year. Newton Technology, which started in Shenzhen, has an integrated hot stamping technology of aluminum alloy. Zhang Tiantian, the general manager of the company, has been stationed in Lingang. In one year, the company has quickly grown from a few people to 50 people, including more than 10 doctors. “For more than a year, we have opened a 10,000-square-meter factory building and will start the construction of a research and development platform. Lingang’s policy gives us the confidence to attract more talents.” Zhang Tiantian said.
To provide many conveniences for enterprises, there are also a number of institutional innovations introduced by financial regulatory authorities, including the pilot reform of foreign exchange management for cross-border trade and investment, and the facilitation of cross-border settlement and investment and financing.
Industrial system innovation to accelerate breakthroughs in key areas
Lingang’s new landmark International Data Port is the result of institutional innovation. “Economic development has produced more and more data. The data must flow and be used by me,” said Li Jing, general manager of the Cross-border Data Technology Company in Shanghai Lingang New Area.
Building a cross-border data flow platform requires breaking through many existing rules. In order to build a data element market hub for domestic circulation and a data cross-border portal carrier for domestic and international dual circulation, through the joint efforts of all parties, relevant data legislation has been promoted and improved, paving the way for the construction of a data platform from an institutional perspective.
In just over two years, the construction of the international data port has achieved positive results. The pilot area of the international data port in the Lingang New Area has stepped up its pilot and demonstration construction. The international digital infrastructure has been accelerated and improved. Begin to explore the innovation of cross-border flow system oriented to new international rules.
Li Jing said that the pilot of cross-border data flow has started, and is promoting the coordinated development of the international data port and data exchange, exploring the construction of an “international board” for data trading, piloting the promotion of overseas data trading in Shanghai, and creating a new concept of “Shanghai trading, global delivery” model.
On the inner road by the Dishui Lake, the dark blue buses are very eye-catching. This is the trial operation of the SenseTime driverless bus. “Lingang has become a blessed place for driverless applications.” SenseTime researchers sighed. In order to get these cars on the road, Lingang put a lot of effort into it.
Smart new energy vehicles are a key industry in Lingang, and the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress has issued a series of new regulations to provide conditions for industrial applications. Lingang has opened 243 self-driving test roads with a total length of 549 kilometers in the new area, providing a good field for the development of the intelligent networked vehicle industry.
Following the introduction of unmanned heavy trucks at Yangshan Port, unmanned buses and unmanned taxis will also be put into operation in Lingang. On August 18, Lingang released the Dishui Lake AI Innovation Port plan, striving to gather 20,000 to 30,000 AI talents and 500 enterprises in 3 years, and the industrial scale will rise to 50 billion yuan, becoming the development of Shanghai’s artificial intelligence industry. New highland, an important gathering place for the national artificial intelligence industry.