China's First Integrated Free Trade Zone Celebrates its First Anniversary and Four Advantages

Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) Integrated Free Trade Zone, the first one in China and with the highest level of opening-up, the most preferential policies, and the most complete functions, celebrated its first anniversary on January 15, 2009. As the first area under special customs supervision and enjoying the preferential policies for bonded port, its operation has attracted extensive attention in this country.

With the Spring Festival in 2009 coming, the staff working at Qingqiupu Bridge Checkpoint of the Integrated Free Trade Zone, Weiting Town, sees a large number of vehicles from all over the country and at least 2,500 pass the station every day. For a year, the Integrated Free Trade Zone has managed to achieve rapid growth in all its practices: the value of import and export cargo under supervision totals at 47.5 billion US dollars, and the total amount of customs declaration forms processed is 490,000. At present, there are in SIP 91 registered production enterprises, 28 logistics companies, 25 trade firms, with a total investment of 2.63 billion US dollars.

The Integrated Free Trade Zone features such superiorities as the intensive use of various resources, the integration of functional policies, and the improvement of efficiency, and has contributed to the growth of SIP, the upgrading of processing trade business in surrounding areas, and the transformation of economic growth pattern from industries to service sector.

Advantage 1: Efficiently Integrating Policies, Land, Supervision, and Other Resources
Suzhou Industrial Park combines the original Export Processing Area A and B and Bonded Logistics Center Type-B Area 3 to achieve more complete preferential policies and reinforced functions, and to integrate and optimize customs supervision resources (by combining the original three virtual offices into one concrete office, three operation sites into one, and five stations into two) so as to make full use of land resources as well as software and hardware facilities.

Advantage 2: Reducing Manufacturing Cost and Promoting Competitiveness in Surrounding Areas

Many leading multi-national companies such as Fairchild Semiconductor Inc., Samsung, Chi Mei Optoelectronics established their Asia-Pacific regional and even their global distribution centers here in order to bring down both the time and cost on distributing raw materials and products.

Advantage 3: Extending Processing Industrial Chain to both Upstream and Downstream Areas and Optimizing the Value Chain
Production companies located inside and outside SIP use the functions and policies of the Integrated Free Trade Zone to develop their R&D, inspection and test, and after-sale services, which help these companies to further improve their value-added processing capacity and to extend their industrial value chain.

Advantage 4: Constructing a Global Material Distribution Base, Regulating and Optimizing Regional Industrial Structure

The Integrated Free Trade Zone serves as a platform to promote the development of such modern industrial services as the third-party logistics and the service outsourcing in surrounding areas. Fairchild Semiconductor Inc., Samsung, and Chi Mei Optoelectronics have already established their distribution centers here and Jaguar-Land Rover, Caterpillar Inc, Micron Electronics, and Auchan also plan to set up their logistics centers here, so an international logistics and distribution base is gradually taking shape here.

Suzhou Industrial Park Customs authority has contributed a great deal through hard work to faster and better growth of the Integrate Bonded Zone.

January 14, 2009