People browse cosmetics and perfumes in a shop on Qilou Old Street in Haikou, Hainan province, on May 9. GUO CHENG/XINHUA
It was a moment that captured the promise of a new era. On the eve of the May Day holiday, a container ship from Italy docked at Yangpu Port in Danzhou, Hainan province, carrying a set of zero-tariff production equipment worth about 16 million yuan ($2.36 million).
Within hours, the machinery — a state-of-the-art tablet packaging line — cleared customs and was rushed to the production floor of Hainan Zambon Pharmaceutical in Haikou National High-Tech Zone. By early June, installation and training were complete. Foreign engineers had barely left when local staff began scrubbing the workshop and familiarizing themselves with the new line, racing toward full operation.
This is not an isolated case. It is the new normal in Hainan, where island-wide special customs operations were launched on Dec 18. Six months into the special customs zone, the numbers tell a striking story of acceleration.
From launch through the end of April, zero-tariff imports into Hainan had hit 2.26 billion yuan, according to the Hainan provincial government. Value-added goods entering China's mainland market under the duty-exemption policy reached 510 million yuan, saving enterprises 24.57 million yuan in tariffs. Passenger traffic through Hainan's ports rose 33.2 percent year-on-year, and the number of new foreign-invested enterprises jumped 35.5 percent.
