Institutional innovations promote growth of Shanghai Free Trade Zone's Lingang New Area

The Lingang New Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone launched a digital platform to promote all-round digital transformation of its Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone on Wednesday, which coincided with the sixth anniversary of the new area's establishment.

The digital platform realizes integrated handling of electronic bills of lading, electronic delivery orders and electronic warehouse receipts, which improves the efficiency and security, while enabling the relevant enterprises to use the electronic documents to seek financing support from banks.

That represented the latest effort of the Lingang New Area in advancing institutional innovation as the core driving force for the growth of the new area's economic scale and its in-depth integration into the global value chain.

"With integrated handling of the three types of electronic documents, the new digital platform is able to help our company cut about 30 percent of cost, including the cost of time, during the entire process," said Zhai Hongkai, an executive of an industry development company using the digital platform.

Over the past six years since the establishment of the Lingang New Area, a series of institutional innovation achievements have been made in the new area, where 166 pioneering typical innovation cases have been formed in fields including offshore trade, cross-border finance, cross-border healthcare, and high-end shipping, among which 79 have been rated as pioneering typical cases nationwide.

In terms of cross-border data flows, the Lingang New Area is currently conducting stress tests for higher-standard opening-up.

So far this year, the Lingang New Area has introduced a negative list for cross-border data flows, which has helped more than 200 companies achieve a 70-percent rise in the efficiency of cross-border data flows by June.

The Lingang New Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone would match the standard of the most competitive free trade zones worldwide and would facilitate overseas investment and capital flows and realize the free flow of goods, according to an overall plan for the area issued by the State Council in August 2019.

Institutional innovations promote growth of Shanghai Free Trade Zone's Lingang New Area

A growing number of Chinese energy companies are increasing their presence in the Persian Gulf as they get deeply involved in the region's energy transition.

As a highlight of China-Gulf cooperation, green energy projects carried out by Chinese companies in Gulf states gained spotlight at the 18th World Future Energy Summit, which took place from Wednesday to Thursday in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A shining example is the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai. As one of the largest single-site solar parks in the world, the solar thermal plant is a key project to help Dubai achieve its carbon reduction goals and significantly increase the share of clean energy in the city's power mix.

"Upon completion in 2030, it will exceed 8,000 megawatts, and it will reduce 8.5 million tons of carbon emmissions on an annual basis. And it will raise Dubai's clean energy capacity up to 36 percent," said Ali Hayat, a senior engineer of the project.

In recent years, more and more Chinese energy product suppliers have transitioned to a new role as investors by building plants and regional offices in the Gulf region to deepen their participation in local energy transition.

"China has been absurdly in the lead in both ways -- in providing technologies that make the cost of solar panel to be affordable around the world, and also in an amazing increase of the share of renewable energy in the energy system," said Francesco La Camera, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Chinese companies seek greater role in Gulf states' energy transition