Free Ports Research Articles

Transformation of theoretical approaches to enhancing the effectiveness of preferential policies

The article presents the results of many years of research by the authors on the evolution of theoretical and methodological approaches to substantiate the prerequisites and conditions for the creation of preferential regimes in various countries and regions. Based on a generalization of a large array of information sources, it was concluded that the applied forms of these regimes (free and special economic zones, free ports, territories of rapid socio-economic development, etc.) are components of regional systems in which special conditions for the functioning of entrepreneurial enterprises are legally established. structures to achieve strategic goals of economic growth. The above study notes the negative experience of creating free economic zones in the Russian Federation in the 90s of the last century due to organizational and economic omissions in the ongoing state policy, with an emphasis on the need for a more informed approach to managing the effectiveness of the implementation of such national projects in the current conditions of stagnation of the Russian economy. Paying special attention to the specifics of the stages of development of preferential regimes, the authors of the article propose a systematization of numerous factors influencing their effectiveness based on the characteristics of spatial localization, level of management, and degree of distribution. The theoretical and practical significance is represented by the author's approach to the formation of a system for managing the effectiveness of preferential regimes, starting with its main component — setting goals for their creation, consistent with the strategic goals of the development of regions and the country. Recognizing the existing imperfection of the holistic system for assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of preferential regimes that are in the process of formation in Russia, the authors emphasize the timeliness and importance of developing appropriate methodological tools, especially taking into account modern external challenges.

Innovative Exploration and Research on International Exchange and Cooperation Mechanisms under the Background of Hainan Free Trade Port

In order to explore and foster innovation in international exchange and cooperation, this study focuses on the background of the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port. It delves into the current development status, characteristic demands, and potential challenges of its international exchange and cooperation mechanisms. Through a comprehensive analysis of relevant cases, survey questionnaires, and literature, this study aims to provide feasible innovative models and recommendations to promote the sustained development of the Hainan Free Trade Port in the field of international exchange and cooperation, injecting new vitality into China’s economic globalization. This exploration contributes to a deeper understanding of the development of free trade ports and provides insights and references for other countries and regions.

Talent incentive policy, innovation performance, organizational innovation climate, and organizational identification: Empirical evidence from high-tech enterprises

This article delved into the intricate dynamics of talent incentive strategies, with a special focus on those implemented in free trade ports, and their profound impact on the innovation performance of employees. The research adopted a dual-focused approach, scrutinizing both the mediating role of the climate of organizational innovation and the moderating influence of organizational identification. The study integrated the organizational innovation climate category by merging classical scales, focusing on individual performance in employee innovation, and the organizational identification category (Acosta-Prado et al., 2021; Han et al., 2007; Mael & Ashforth, 1992). The research encompassed 58 high-tech firms in the Hainan Free Trade Port (HFTP), disseminated 1817 questionnaires, retrieved 1666, and validated 1262, achieving a 74.8 percent validity rate. The employed methodology was hierarchical regression analysis, a potent statistical tool enabling a nuanced comprehension of the variable relationships. The analysis findings revealed that employees’ perceptions of talent incentive policies could positively impact their innovation performance, highlighting the significance of these perceptions in determining policy effectiveness. The study uncovered that talent incentive policies influenced innovation performance, mediated by the organizational climate and amplified by employee identification with the organization. These insights can inform strategies to optimize talent incentives, cultivate an innovative culture, and boost overall performance.

Algorithmic Complexity Research on Foreign-related Tourism English Education and Talent Cultivation Models in the Context of Free Trade Port

Abstract In today’s booming development of free trade ports, China, as a big country of inbound and outbound tourism, has put forward higher requirements for the talent cultivation mode of foreign-related tourism English. This paper takes the characteristics of foreign-related tourism English as the entry point and establishes the practical teaching system and the four-in-one talent cultivation mode of foreign-related tourism English. The multi-objective optimization model for cultivating foreign tourism English talents is proposed, with the objective function of enhancing the quality of foreign tourism English talents, and the corresponding constraints are set. The multi-objective optimization model is solved using the DQN model, and a strategy gradient algorithm-based model training optimization strategy is proposed. The test conditions of foreign-related tourism English talent cultivation are set, simulation experiments are carried out, and teaching experiments are compared based on the optimal scheme. The training loss obtained by the DQN model after 1700 iterations fluctuates between [0.015,0.019], and when the training period is set to 2 years, the cumulative return of foreign-related tourism English talent cultivation can reach 623.87%, and the maximum retracement is only - 5.457%. The optimal talent cultivation program’s average score is 14.1 points higher than the ordinary version. Foreign-related tourism English needs to be fully integrated with the actual demand for talent, and the faculty and policy guidelines help to enhance the quality of foreign-related tourism English talent training.

The Path Towards Green Transformation in Hainan's Manufacturing Sector

Under the inevitable choice of China's "dual carbon" strategy and ecological civilization construction, Hainan Province's free trade port adheres to green development. The green transformation of manufactory in Hainan Province is also active. Green transformation is influenced by multiple factors and involves the entire manufacturing cycle. Thus, this article first sorted out the 31 major categories of manufacturing in Hainan, calculated the average energy consumption of manufacturing enterprises above a certain scale, and obtained the basic situation of manufacturing enterprises in Hainan Province. This article also uses literature review to analyze the specific path of green transformation in Hainan Province's manufacturing industry from three aspects: government policies, industrial structure, and energy consumption. The research results found that there is a clear trend of green transformation in the manufacturing industry in Hainan Province. This article suggests that Hainan Province should expand the positive impact of policies such as free trade ports, promote digital and intelligent development, and continuously adjust industrial institutions.

Emulating Empires: Caribbean Free Ports, Economic Dualism, and European Imperial Rivalry, c. 1670s–1760s

ABSTRACTWhen the Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) established the free port of Willemstad, Curaçao after 1674, they launched a model for economic competition that other European empires would emulate. Within a century, the Danish, Spanish, British, and French all established their own Caribbean free ports. Emulation, however, was not replication. This article argues that while the expansion of free ports into different Caribbean empires generated similar forms of economic dualism (prohibitive commercial systems in certain locales with more-open ones in others), they all served varying purposes. The Dutch and Danish maintained or expanded their free-port systems and utilised strategic neutrality to remain active players within an increasingly competitive economic arena. Britain wanted to extend its commercial empire by making foreign realms dependent on its trade. France sought to pacify recalcitrant planters desperate for reliable provisioning. Finally, Spain enacted free ports in Santo Domingo to supply and encourage settlement in a region threatened by French encroachments. Thus, although these empires all established free ports in strategic locales and jealously emulated each other, they did so with unique political-economic aims in mind. Meanwhile, merchants, enslaved Africans, sailors, settlers, and European intellectuals employed Caribbean free ports to accomplish their own ends as well.

The Failure of the Dutch Free Ports in the Nineteenth Century: Commerce, Colonialism and the Constitution

ABSTRACT In the 1820s and 1830s, two debates about free ports took place in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. One debate concerned domestic fiscal policy and the regulation of foreign trade. In this debate the legacies of the political economic thought of Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp and the mid eighteenth-century debate on turning the Dutch Republic into a limited free port were played out. The first Dutch debate on free ports was a response to changing conditions in global trade and a further attempt to regain the old staple market and connect it to an industrialising national economy. The other debate concerned the establishment of the Dutch Trade Company (Nederlandse Handels Maatschappij) and the declaration of a series of overseas free ports in the years after the British seizure of Singapore and its ratification in 1824. This second debate concerned the modernisation of colonial trade to halt the expansion of British commercial settlements in and around the Dutch East Indies as well as in the Caribbean. Together these debates represented the national challenge to put the entire Dutch economy on a new foundation and reflected differing constitutional perspectives that had pitted liberals against patriots since the late eighteenth century.

Spatial Frameworks of Comparison: Planning Western India’s Free Ports and Free Trade Zones, 1830s–1980s

ABSTRACT Ports offer key vantage points from which to write a global history, as their trade connects people, goods, and capital to far reaching parts of the world. Instead of focusing on trade connections, this article proposes studying the spatial frameworks of comparison in free port and free zone planning. Using reports from ports, ministries, and chambers of commerce, this article analyses these shifting frameworks for comparison in Bombay’s port planning from the 1830s to the 1980s. Port planners, merchants, and ministry experts placed these ports and zones within shifting spatial frameworks, which determined which zones or ports could and could not be compared. These comparisons informed policy changes. Uncovering India’s free port and zone debates reveals the plurality of concepts and policy models, not a single original zone that has spread around the world. This article asks how these actors understood the world, its changing spatial formats, and the role of free ports or free zones in these constellations.

‘It Is Like a Contagion’: The Spanish Atlantic Debate on Free Ports of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

ABSTRACTThis article reconstructs the Ibero-American debate on free ports by looking both at the circulation of ideas and news in the Atlantic, and at the political and institutional changes that the debate generated, focusing on the cases of Veracruz and Cadiz. It aims to show how the discourse on free ports permeated both sides of the Atlantic and became a pervasive political, economic, and intellectual aspect of the desire for reform and independence.

Enclaves of Exception: Reaping the Advantages of Colonialism Through Free Trade in the Scandinavian Caribbean, 1672–1815

ABSTRACT The mercantile history of Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia, free ports in the Danish (1672–1917) and Swedish (1784–1878) Caribbean, have existed outside of the standard purview of both national and transnational historiographies, despite the considerable attention they received by eighteenth century political and economic thought. Due to their unique legislative character, they cannot be situated easily within available historical frameworks. In contemporary politico-economic opinion and eyewitness accounts, the Scandinavian free ports were equated to other free trade regimes insofar as they were conceived as a means of commercial rivalry against other nations. The liberal laws of free ports were styled as consistent with Enlightenment theories of equality and industry, even though they did not represent anything novel in the permeable commercial world of early modern colonialism. Interloping, as the practice of trespassing commercial privilege was commonly referred to, was a key feature of the transit trade operating out of these free ports. The utility of the free port trade was highly contingent upon shifting alliances and patterns of conflict. Operating across the peripheries of other empires, Scandinavian free trade designs in the Caribbean were beneficial for various actors, including but not limited to the parent states themselves.

‘Native’ Vladivostok vs. ‘Alien’ Dal’nii – the Pacific Porto-Franco and the Search for ‘Russian Interests’ in the Far East (1901–1904)

ABSTRACT This article examines the 1901–1904 discussions about free trade in the Priamur region and the territories in Chinese Manchuria leased to the Russian Empire. The discussions are placed in the contexts of nationalising empire, Russian imperialism, and cosmopolitan society of the globalised free port of Vladivostok. The piece traces the place of ideas about free trade in the social and political imagination of contemporaries in the Priamur region to show how these images were challenged by imperial expansion in Manchuria. It also analyses the rhetorical strategies used by regional actors to re-negotiate the borders of economic and political expansion, as well as the internal and external comparisons they made. The article demonstrates how debates about free trade in the Russian Far East offer deeper insight into how ideas about free trade and free ports as institutions affected not only the economic but social and political transformations in the late imperial period.

Free Ports within Empire: The Intellectual Origins of Spain’s Intra-Imperial System of Free Trade, 1765–1789

ABSTRACT Between 1765 and 1789, the Spanish crown issued a series of comercio libre decrees that liberalised trade between Spanish America and peninsular Spain. What was the crown attempting to do by relaxing trade restrictions within the empire? Because the comercio libre decrees only authorised free trade within the confines of the empire, it may be easy to conclude, as the extant scholarship has, that these decrees were a delayed attempt to revitalise an increasingly obsolete mercantilist system. Indeed, Spain’s new imperial system of free trade appears to be little more than an outmoded form of protectionism centred on hoarding bullion. This article pushes against this perspective and shows that Spain’s decrees of comercio libre were part of an attempt to erect a peculiar interconnected system of free ports within the empire. Even though Spain’s free trade system excluded international trade, its intellectual architects deployed Enlightenment political economy to dynamize and integrate the imperial economy while avoiding the increasingly bellicose competition for international markets that was ascendant among European empires.

A Study on the Current Situation and Countermeasures of Ecological Civilization Education for College Students under the Construction of National Ecological Civilization Pilot Zone - A Case Study of 21 Universities in Hainan Province

In recent years, under the background that the country gradually attaches importance to ecological civilization accomplishment and strengthens the construction of ecological civilization system, ecological civilization construction has become an important part of Chinese social governance, and ecological civilization education in colleges and universities has also received continuous attention. As a national pilot zone for ecological civilization, Hainan Province has concentrated advantages in environmental resources and is a key player in promoting ecological civilization in the construction of free trade ports. In this context, as the main front of talent training, colleges and universities should actively play the role of educating people on their intellectual bases. They should not only do a good job in ecological civilization education and promote the construction of the strategic quality of ecological civilization in the whole society but also give full play to the positive role of ecological civilization in economic construction and social development. As the construction of ecological civilization continues to progress, various entities have made some degree of progress in the field of ecological civilization education. Firstly, the government has continued to improve the top-level design and accelerate the construction of ecological civilized policy systems and ideological systems; secondly, universities have co-ordinated and civilization the allocation of disciplines, strengthened the concept of research and study and expanded practical platforms; thirdly, the public has actively participated in creating a favourable atmosphere in society as a whole to advocate ecological civilization and promote the integration and coordination of various educational resources. But at the same time, the development of ecological civilization education also faces many difficulties. First, the depth of theoretical research is insufficient, the discipline barrier has not been broken through, and the educational results have little effect. Second, the policy system needs to be improved, the educational logic is not clear, and the policy framework needs to be optimized. Third, the orientation of education is fuzzy, personnel training lags, and the transformation of practice is hindered seriously. Fourth, the main body of education is dislocated and lacking, the potential of resources is weak, and the integration still needs to be strengthened. Based on this, this paper analyzes the implementation of ecological civilization education in 21 universities in Hainan Province through field research, summarizes the current dilemmas and problems in ecological civilization education, attempts to strengthen the cause-effect orientation, deepen the theoretical construction of ecological civilization education in universities on the premise of clarifying the correlative influences of ecological awareness and participation behaviour, actively explores the effective path of cultivating ecological awareness among university students, and provides benefits for the construction of ecological civilization in Hainan Province and the development of Hainan's free trade port.

A New Inquiry into the Ideological and Political Education of College Students in the Context of Free Trade Port

Abstract Ideological and political education is the fundamental guarantee to realize the goal and direction of college students’ talent training, and the key factor of Hainan free trade port construction is talent. Therefore, this paper carries out a new exploration of the ideological and political education of college students based on the background of free trade ports and selects the SPOC hybrid teaching model to carry out the ideological and political education of college students. Using the AHP-FCE evaluation mechanism, we construct the AHP three-level evaluation indexes and establish the FCE evaluation factor set. By calculating the affiliation matrix and hierarchical weight vector of the three-level index set, we make a comprehensive evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of the SPOC hybrid teaching model in ideological and political teaching and prove that it can improve students’ ideological and political performance and cultivate talents. In this paper, we conducted experiments in five colleges and universities and proved that students’ performance in ideology and politics under the SPOC hybrid teaching model increased from only 60 passing marks to more than 75 marks per capita. The teachers’ teaching time of ideology and politics also increased by at least 5 hours and at most 7 hours based on the original one. It can be seen that the SPOC teaching model applied to the ideological and political education of college students can significantly improve the ideological and political achievements of students, and can provide a steady stream of high-quality talents for the construction of the Hainan free trade port.

Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order. By John Shovlin

John Shovlin presents a significantly researched, clearly written work on a question of pressing actuality and historiographical durability: commercial relations between France and England. Having written previously on noble culture in Ancien Régime France, in which context he explored the meaning and operation of ‘court capitalism’ (The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), he turns here to a broader geopolitical and historiographical question: ‘the political competition for commercial wealth in Franco-British relations’. Shovlin argues trade was ‘strategic’, precisely because commercial wealth was central to both state power and the ‘balance of power’ between states (pp. 26–27). Drawing on the insights of post-revisionist French Revolutionary historiography, this book shows that ‘capitalism’ provided the intellectual framework of ‘political economy’ for ‘states and chartered companies and the officials who managed them’ (p. 29). Moreover, underscoring the enduring influence of John Brewer’s work on the Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London: Unwin, 1989), the book demonstrates how concern for English state power framed how social and political elites perceived and pursued their economic interest. The book is not a narrative of trade treaties or trade relations, though the treaties of 1713 and 1786 are discussed in detail. It is also not a history of the major trading companies, though the South Sea Company, the East India Company, and the Compagnie des Indes all figure prominently. Rather than a narrative or institutional history, the book is structured as a series of thematic essays. This choice necessarily involves some repetition and can result in some confusion for the non-specialist reader, which is mitigated by capsule biographies and a timeline of events in the preface. The length of the text may also have guided the decision, presumably of the publisher, to include only a select bibliography, referencing all primary sources solely in the endnotes. The benefit of the author’s strategy is the detailed, and original, analysis Shovlin offers of specific concepts in eighteenth-century political culture, including mercantilism, physiocracy, Law’s system, the asiento, the exclusif, American free ports, and, above all, free trade. Collectively, the essays demonstrate that concepts of market development and competition were not incompatible, for wholesale traders, commercial financiers, and government officials, with concepts of restraint, stability, and peace. Shovlin thereby offers us a much more contextualized and subtle understanding of eighteenth-century free-trade advocacy. Yet, the most profound lesson Shovlin’s book may teach us is implicit: how little concern policy-makers had for retail consumers. For all their engaged discussion of free ports, public debt, and international peace, the sources appear to mention retail sugar prices only in passing, and the price of wheat, bread, or tea not at all. Likewise, outside of their efforts to obtain and retain the right to profit from enslavement, his sources show little interest in fluctuations in wages or consumer purchasing power. One could almost imagine them assuring their respective political constituencies that free-trade negotiations would readily produce ‘oven-ready’ agreements, which in turn would lead their countries to ‘sunlit uplands’.

Construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port from the perspective of regional cultural development

This study summarizes the internal relationship and mechanism of industrialization, business culture, and higher education that affect the development of modern industrial and commercial culture, and consequently, the construction of free trade ports in Hainan. The cases of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai free trade ports were considered as references. Based on immigration, naturalization, and education in Hainan’s history, Hainan’s cultural base map, which influences the construction of modern industrial and commercial culture, was proposed to be formed by splicing and overlapping of the free, guarding, farming-reading, farming-marine, and immigrant cultures. The development course of Hainan in the past 30 years indicated that although Hainan has always been at the forefront and highland of reform and opening up, it is still relatively backward despite the implementation of long-term policies; moreover, its development performance is not ideal. The existing problems and factors related to the present ideology mainly include the following: 1) The pursuit of “making quick money” has led to the ups and downs of Hainan’s development. 2) Lack of innovation hinders functional improvement leading to poor sustainability. 3) The course of modern industrial civilization based on a cultural base map is short. 4) Although bottom-up industrialization plays a key role in the formation of modern industrial civilization, it is not followed by Hainan. Furthermore, the cultural development path of Hainan Free Trade Port construction should 1) strongly promote industrialization by overcoming the shortcomings of industrial development, 2) deepen the reform of the agricultural reclamation system, improve the business environment, and cultivate a healthy modern industrial and commercial culture, 3) standardize the tourism market, and build the most advanced tourism industry culture, 4) improve the basic education level and develop excellent higher education opportunities, 5) enhance the diversity of human resources structure, and 6) revitalize literature and art, and showcase and develop Hainan’s fine culture. Overall, the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port requires long-term upgrading and development. It is necessary to continue cultural construction, adapt to the requirements of the highest level of openness and realize the healthy development of the Hainan Free Trade Port.

한국과 중국의 국제의료관광 정책 비교연구: 보아오 국제의료관광 선행구를 중심으로

This study focuses on suggesting a path for medical tourism in Korea by examining institutional support cases such as free trade ports in Chinese medical tourism pilot zone, which is developing the medical tourism industry with a focus on Traditional Chinese Medicine. This study reviewed at the medical tourism policy promoted by China, focusing on the Boao International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone. China has adopted a strategy of conducting a pilot operation in a specific area when making new policy attempts and expanding the application area according to the result. The service level of medical and wellness tourism also depends on infrastructure such as the connectivity of international transportation, the comfort of accommodation, and the convenience of domestic transportation. Therefore, an appropriate level of policy support related to infrastructure will be required. This paper presents the direction and implications for high value-added medical tourism to overcome the difficulties that the tourism industry is experiencing after COVID-19.

Industrial structure optimization, economic development factors and regional economic risk prevention in post COVID-19 period: empirical analysis based on panel data of Guangdong regional economy.

In the post-COVID-19 period, the regional economic development gap in Guangdong has expanded and the risk has increased. This is not conducive to building a well-off society in Guangdong in an all-round way. Optimizing the industrial structure, changing the mode of economic growth, preventing regional economic risks, and narrowing the regional economic development gap are the focus of Guangdong governments at all levels. Based on a two-sector economic growth model, the paper uses descriptive statistics and Deng's grey correlation method to analyze the economic development panel data of 21 prefecture-level cities of Guangdong Province from 2011 to 2018, analyzes the characteristics of regional economic development in Guangdong, and makes experimental research of the effect of industrial structure optimization and economic development factors on economic growth in Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Shantou, Maoming and Meizhou at different stages of development. The results show that: there are differences in the industrial structure and the level of economic development in different regions; the rationalization of industrial structure and upgrading of the industrial structure has an impact on economic growth and show different features during different stages; in different stages of economic development, foreign trade, scientific and technological innovation are the main factors affecting regional economic growth. This paper holds that the northwest of Guangdong Province and the Pearl River Delta should formulate industrial structure adjustment policies to promote the rationalization of regional industrial structure, expand foreign trade channels and innovate financing mechanisms, and restrain regional economic risks in combination with regional characteristics. The new development pattern of domestic and international dual circulation and mutual promotion, further expands the level of opening up, effectively playing the role of free trade pilot areas, free trade ports, special economic zones, development zones, bonded areas, and other frontier highlands, improve the level and capacity of foreign trade.

The Role of Makassar in Promoting the Archipelago Spice Route in the XVI–XVII Centuries

PurposeThis study explored the three roles of Makassar in advancing the archipelago's spice routes: port growth arrangement, maritime policy, and maritime trade management in the XVI—XVII centuries.MethodThis study used historical research methods including heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The sources of data used were local sources (lontara) and foreign sources (Portuguese, Dutch, and English) to answer the three problems mentioned above by placing Makassar as the subject of the Nusantara spice route.Results/FindingsThe results of the study are: 1) the port growth arrangement the Makassar authorities did was by responding to the global trade dynamics around the spice route, such as focusing on structuring its ports as the centre of the Maluku spice trade. Second, maritime policy was implemented through free ports and the principle of Mare Liberum to advance Makassar to become an entrepot and a cosmopolitan world city. Third, the codification of Ammana Gappa's shipping and trade laws in Makassar further strengthens the maritime identity of the Makassarese, Bugis, and Mandar people in building the spice route of the Archipelago.ConclusionStarting from the perspective of the archipelago as a subject, this study shows the role of Makassar in promoting the spice route. Studies like this can also be developed at other ports on the spice route, thereby strengthening the archipelago's contribution to the history of the world's spice routes.

Policy Optimization for Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park Based on Quantitative Comparison of Regional Policies of Free Trade Port Areas

Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, as one of the first national parks established in China, should make full use of the gold brand of “Hainan Free Trade Port” and “National Park,” rely on the advantages and potential of system integration and innovation, draw on the experience of national parks in mature free trade ports (FTPs), and build a perfect national park policy system. This study introduces the PMC index model, constructs a national park policy evaluation index system, and conducts a systematic comparative analysis of 14 representative national park policies in Hainan rainforest, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The study finds that the policy of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park is not effective enough, the policy in social and cultural fields is relatively lacking, the policy content needs to be further strengthened, and the policy functions need to be improved, etc., and puts forward corresponding suggestions for optimization.