Shanghai Free Trade Zone Research Articles

Can the Establishment of Free Trade Zones Promote Carbon Emission Reduction? ----Based on Multi-period Double Difference Model

As the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) celebrates its 10th anniversary, it is crucial to examine the impact of the FTZ's construction on regional carbon emissions under the dual carbon targets of carbon neutrality and carbon peaking. Based on panel data from 282 prefecture-level cities between 2006 and 2021, this article aims to provide insight into the impact of the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) pilot policy on urban carbon dioxide emissions levels. By constructing a difference-in-differences (DID) model, this study aims to investigate the effects of the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) policy on carbon emission reduction. In order to perform a mechanism test, two more mechanistic variables—namely, technical advancement and upgrading of the industrial structure—are incorporated. According to the findings from experiments, the policy of free trade zones can effectively reduce carbon emissions from urban areas. This is primarily achieved by optimizing the industrial structure and scientific and technological mechanisms.

ENTERING SHANGHAI FREE TRADE ZONE: FROM MALAYSIA’S BUSINESSMEN PERSPECTIVE

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), introduced in 2013, has been strongly supported by various Free Trade Zones (FTZs). The pilot Shanghai Free Trade Zone (SFTZ) received much attention after a major reform in 2019. Malaysia’s enterprises consist of young and infant industries. Hence, this study has aimed to provide insights into the awareness among Malaysia’s enterprises towards SFTZ. In addition, hidden opportunities and challenges will be discussed in detail and further enlighten the concerns of Malaysian enterprises. A purposive sampling method has been applied to select the participants for the five focus group discussions. The results indicated a gap between government practices and industry players regarding the opportunities, challenges, and prospects in the SFTZ. Malaysia is expected to benefit from the SFTZ through comparative advantages in certain industries, with its talent, and through unique products with intellectual property rights. At the same time, Malaysian businesses have remained constrained by several obstacles, such as lack of information, exit policies and differences in regulations. Although MATRADE has stepped in as a bridge between local and Shanghai enterprises, more is needed to be done.

Low carbon research of science and technology park in southern cities

Climate change is a major global issue of general concern to the international community. As a developing country focusing on environmental protection, China has adopted a series of relevant policies and measures to address global warming, namely, achieving carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. It can be said that carbon peaking is China's national policy to actively respond to climate change, and is also an independent commitment based on scientific demonstration; Carbon neutrality is an action goal based on China's national conditions and is also a long-term development strategy with a long-term vision. In order to realize the important long-term strategy of “carbon neutrality” at an early date, low-carbon buildings will gradually come into people's lives. This paper first analyzes the crisis and challenges we are facing under the background of the current era, and expounds how to solve the energy crisis. In this paper, we propose that green and low-carbon buildings will make a significant contribution to solving the problem of carbon pollution. Then, we studied the low carbon scheme of science and technology parks in southern cities through literature review, and case study. Next, taking the project of Block H01-01, Unit PDC1-0401, Lingang New Area of Shanghai Free Trade Zone as an example, we 、analyzed the technical characteristics of the project's climate responsive design and the integrated design of renewable energy buildings, and elaborated its project functions. While satisfying people's demands for scientific research and comfortable living, it also responded to the call of the national “double carbon” goal and completed the task of “strengthening building energy conservation and continuously improving building energy efficiency” in the key work of energy conservation, emission reduction and carbon reduction in Shanghai. Finally, it is concluded that green and low-carbon buildings can make outstanding contributions to the realization of “double carbon” goals in the future, and at the same time provide a more powerful guarantee for human living environment and quality of life.

Information Extraction and Knowledge Graph Construction for Enterprises in China’s Free Trade Zone

With the establishment and rapid development of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ), the scale of enterprises in the zone has grown rapidly. This paper takes the actual needs of the Shanghai FTZ as the background, extracts key information such as entities from the Big Data related to Internet enterprises, further constructs the enterprise knowledge graph, and applies it to the supervision and service of the FTZ. The enterprise knowledge graph is constructed using the Neo4j graph database. To verify the effectiveness of the named entity identification and relationship extraction methods proposed in this paper, experiments were conducted to validate them, and both achieved good results.

Intelligent evaluation of trade efficiency of agricultural products between China and ASEAN: An stochastic frontier approach with noise reduction

As the world’s largest free trade area among developing countries, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area has gone through 15 years, and the China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Free Trade Area cooperation framework with tariff reduction as the core has diminished incentive effects on regional trade, the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” strategy provide new opportunities for the upgrading and development of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area. Based on the stochastic frontier gravity model, the random disturbance term was introduced to overcome the inevitable noise problem of macro statistical data, the trade efficiency of agricultural products between China and ASEAN were estimated in this study. The result shows that the potential for trade promotion between China and ASEAN countries is fully tapped. Based on this, it is proposed to strengthen infrastructure construction and smooth maritime trade channels with the help of the “One Road” platform. Strengthen communication and dialogue to weaken the impact of non-tariff barriers on trade, and use the Shanghai Free Trade Zone test plot to enhance the international competitiveness of Chinese agricultural product trade.

The Strategic Role of Special Economic Zones in Economic Development: A Special Case of Shanghai Free Trade Zone

This study is dealing with the strategic changes in the Chinese Economy in the light of launch of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone. In this process, it has used secondary data from the government sources for analysis the state of economy as well the development efforts in the last one year of the launch of CSPFTZ. The thrust of the study was to assess the reform processes on administrative and financial sectors. This study also deals with the mechanisms of transition of China from the mixed economy to the market economy. However, it is assumed that China has not become a complete market economy and still in the mid of major transition. The models political economy for the transition economy are assessed with the help of existing theories. From the study it was found that in the initial stage of establishment of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, there were several change were brought in to administrative and financial sector level. These developments are also compared with other existing free trade zone. Despite being the second largest economy in the world China maintains very strategic and rigorous control over its capital. After three decades of economic liberalization the monetary control of China is still persisting. This China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone was also an attempt to taste its limits in terms of these two key monetary aspects of Chinese Economy; floating exchange rate and currency convertibility. It is really important to assess that what are the outcomes of this pilot project but this was one of the vital features of launching Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

The Influence of E-Commerce on the Foreign Trade of Shanghai Free Trade Zone

Purpose: As one of the most developed cities in China, the application of e-commerce is more mature, especially the promotion of ecommerce to foreign trade. After the establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in 2013, the government issued a series of policies to promote the application of e-commerce in Shanghai's foreign trade. This paper takes Shanghai FTZ as an example to study how to develop the application of e-commerce in other free trade zones and how to innovate the international trade mode. Research design, data and methodology: This paper selects the latest data from 2010 to 2019, uses econometric correlation analysis and regression analysis to study the impact of e-commerce on the foreign trade of Shanghai FTZ. Results: At last, the conclusion is drawn that the establishment of free trade zone provides many advantages for the development of e-commerce in Shanghai, and the growth of e-commerce in Shanghai FTZ promotes the development of foreign trade of Shanghai FTZ. Conclusions: So as to promote the development of e-commerce in Shanghai Free Trade Zone, some suggestions are put forward, such as increasing network supervision, establishing e-commerce talent training system, logistics management and information management systematization.

Has the Construction of the Free Trade Zone Increased the Enterprise's Total Factor Productivity—Evidence from Generalized Synthetic Control

The Free Trade Zone(FTZ) is a new policy for China to open wider to the outside world. Reducing trade barriers and promoting high-quality enterprise development is an important part of the construction of the FTZ. This article takes the construction of the FTZ based on From 2004 to 2018 as a quasi-natural experiment. The study found that: (1) The policy evaluation results show that after controlling the time and individual effects, the construction of the FTZ plays a significant role in promoting TFP. (2) The construction of the FTZ can promote the improvement of TFP through innovation-driven effects and resource allocation adjustment effects. The analysis shows that patents and the return on assets play an intermediary role between the FTZ and TFP. (3) After considering the time and industry effects, the construction of the FTZ has a significant impact on the TFP growth in state-owned enterprises; the general synthetic control method was used to investigate 11 FTZ, and the construction of Shanghai free trade zone has the most significant effect on the promotion of TFP. The main innovation of this article is the establishment of the FTZ has carried out a policy effect evaluation on the promotion effect of TFP, and has conducted a robustness test using the multi-phase DID method. It has a guiding significance for improving the construction of FTZ and promoting the improvement of enterprise TFP.

Striving for greatness: status aspirations, rhetorical entrapment, and domestic reforms

How do leaders use external events or pressures as political levers to facilitate domestic reforms? In this article, we build a theory of aspirational politics to address this question. We show that aspirations to improve a country’s international status can help leaders justify the implementation of their preferred domestic policies. For instance, the aspiration of wanting to join prestigious international organizations or agreements creates focal narratives that reformers can use to highlight the need to catch up and rhetorically constrain domestic actors who oppose reforms. We illustrate this mechanism through the Chinese leaders’ counterintuitively positive statements towards the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from 2013 to 2016. By framing the TPP as an aspiration through which China can enhance its international status, Chinese leaders were able to justify domestic economic reforms. Unlike conventional explanations, this was done without the onset of crises or actually signing the TPP. We substantiate this claim using evidence from computer-assisted text analysis of Chinese news coverage of the TPP from 2008-2018 (N = 10189) and process-tracing of the establishment of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

Regulatory Simplifications for Foreign Investors in China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone

The present article deals with the legal regime in Shanghai Free Trade Zone in the context of business activity taken up by foreign (Polish) entities on the territory of the People’s Republic of China. First of all, the author discusses the general problems in international exchange between Poland and the PRC as well as the chief barriers in access to the Chinese market. The following section of the article is devoted to the general legal provisions that apply to foreign businesses in the Middle Kingdom. Part three discusses preliminary issues related to Shanghai Free Trade Zone with regard to partnerships and companies established by foreign entities. The final section concerns the legislative simplifications in the Free Trade Zone as compared with the general regulations which apply to foreign (Polish) businesses in the PRC. The conclusion features an evaluation of the simplifications and their attractiveness for Polish businesses.

论在上海自贸区推行航空临时仲裁——以横琴自由贸易试验区临时仲裁制度为借鉴

论在上海自贸区推行航空临时仲裁——以横琴自由贸易试验区临时仲裁制度为借鉴

Research on the Revelation of Copy Strategy of the Innovation Model of the Tax Policies in Shanghai FTA—Take Heilongjiang Province as an Example

This paper is aimed at the wise call proposed by the central government to set up replicable tax policies in Shanghai FTA, and quotes the urgent need to copy to all parts of the country apply to regional economic construction and Free Trade Zone Development. For this reason, Take Heilongjiang Province as an example, Methods of Literature retrieval, Investigation and research, analogical analysis and judgment reasoning are applied, The real meaning, structure, policy formulation and implementation experience and application environment of tax policy of the tax policies in Shanghai FTA are teased out, and the prerequisite to copy the tax policies in Shanghai FTA, that is, the construction of need situation for trade developing environment in other provinces and regions is analysed, the instructive principles and detailed strategies for copying the tax policies in Shanghai FTA are discussed, which bears universal guiding meaning for copying the tax policies in Shanghai FTA nationwide. Finally, it clarified the important inspirations of the provinces and regions to replicate the tax policy model of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. It emphasized that the consciousness of duplicating the content and structure of the policy model was eliminated, and the idea of simply “copying” the tax policy model was transformed into the effective integration of the national tax policy and the introduction of research talents and tax Services, etc., apply what they have learned, and avoid Simple copying and blind application.

Planning and Layout of Shanghai Yangshan Bonded Port Area Based on the Perspective of a Free Trade Zone

In order to alleviate China's crisis of marginalization in international trade, combined with the development characteristics of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the development direction of the bonded cold chain business of Shanghai Yangshan Comprehensive Bonded Port Area was proposed. From a long-term perspective, a free trade zone integrating processing, logistics, finance, culture, and internal and external market trade was formed. By taking advantage of the huge consumption of imported food in the Yangtze river delta region, the policy advantages of Yangshan Port Area are exploited. Combined with the development of cross-border e-commerce, innovative experiences that could be replicated and promoted are formed. The results showed that the free trade zone is the development direction of the bonded port area. Therefore, the Shanghai Bonded Port Area should focus on the integration with the development of the free trade zone in the initial stage. This lays a solid foundation for the construction of the bonded port area as a comprehensive internal and external trade platform for ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the domestic market. Research on the planning and layout of trade zones can help plan the future development of trade zones and their direction. The trade zone is pre-controlled. The efficiency of future construction and upgrading of the bonded area is improved. It is of great practical significance to the current development and construction of the Shanghai Bonded Port Area.

A Comparative Analysis of Effective Free Trade Zone Policies in Ghana: A Model from Shanghai Free Trade Zone

The importance of export promotion contribution to the growth of a country’s economy cannot be underrated. It is well-established that, encouraging volumes of exports and/or value of exports results in the increase in the export of a country leading to an increase in earnings of foreign exchange and further results in economic boost of a country. A comparative analysis of effective Free Trade Zone Policies in Ghana using China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone (“SHFTZ”) as a model has been done. Desktop research was used to analyze the data. It was found that there has been year on year increase in the number of companies registering with the Ghana free zones. On the average, there have been about 15% contribution to the gross export of Ghana. The China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone (“SHFTZ”) contributed 5.68%, 13.2%, 15.2% and 22.9% from the first quarter after the inception of the FTZ, at the end of 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively to the GDP of Shanghai.

The Impact of the Negative List Approach on the International Competitiveness of Service Industries

In 2013, China formally tried out the negative list management mode in Shanghai Free Trade Zone. Based on this background, this paper makes an empirical study of the effect of the implementation of the negative list management mode on the international competitiveness of service industries in a country from a perspective of value added in trade, to provide references for future reform of foreign investment access system. It shows that compared with the countries without the negative list approach, the international competitiveness of service industries in countries with the negative list approach reduces, indicating that after the implementation of the negative list approach, foreign enterprises entering a host country can crowd out domestic value-added share of the host country’s services exports by their competitive advantages, and weaken the competitive advantage of domestic enterprises in the host country in domestic exports. Moreover, the differentiated analysis results show that the negative impact of negative list on the international competitiveness of service industries is likely to be more significant for the host countries with lower GDP, worse law environment and for countries applying a negative list for partners with higher GDP, and the international competitiveness traditional services suffer more from the negative list. As a result, this paper concludes that it is necessary for China to reform the internal legal system during the international investment liberalization process, which means we should improve the legislation about foreign investment in service industry to make up for the negative impact of the negative list approach. And China should take the difference in both sectors and regions into consideration to optimize the degree and order of opening-up, and make sure that China could promote the service competitiveness effectively during the international investment liberalization process.

Overall Planning of Shanghai New Trade Zone from an Ecological Economic Perspective

Since the reform and opening up, the economy of China has rapidly developed. The system, structure, mode, and pattern of the foreign trade in China must be adjusted accordingly to adapt to new economic normality. In this study, the main types of free trade areas worldwide were analyzed, and the necessary conditions for their successful development were examined on the basis of an ecological economic perspective. The Shanghai free trade area is a typical representative of a new type of Trade Zone in China. It introduces the principles of sustainable development, people oriented, green, low-carbon and other eco free trade zones. The planning characteristics of Shanghai free trade zone were studied from the point of view of planning economy and land use. Taking Shanghai Yangshan land free trade zone as an example, the planning research was carried out in terms of functional zoning, environment, transportation and facilities. In summary, this study provided theoretical and technical references for the construction of free trade areas and for the formulation of significant policies.

Domestic Politics and External Financial Liberalization in China: The Capacity and Fragility of External Market Pressure

This article explores how the Chinese Communist Party has relied in part on making global financial markets and institutions a source of external pressure to help pass domestic economic and financial reform. We explore two case studies of external financial liberalization: the listing of Chinese state-owned enterprises on foreign stock exchanges and the financial reform aspects of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. These studies show that external liberalization policies are interlinked with both micro- and macro-level reforms in the domestic economy. We conclude that, after 2005, this strategy of applying external pressure, in fact, did not lead to more comprehensive economic restructuring because the agents of external pressure—in this instance, foreign banks and accounting firms—were themselves party to the reinforcement of state control and ultimately did not (or could not) promote further external liberalization. Domestic agents that supported external liberalization were also quick to abandon it when external pressure conflicted with other domestic policy objectives.

China’s Liberalization of Legal Services Under the ChAFTA: Market Access or Lack of Market Access for Australian Legal Practices

This article explores China’s commitments to liberalizing legal services under the recently concluded China – Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA). While China’s ChAFTA commitments extend beyond its commitments on legal services under the World Trade Organization and under most of China’s other Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), we argue that the degree of liberalization under the ChAFTA has been over-stated. The ChAFTA does not create additional market access for Australian legal practices as it merely recognizes the existing practice in the Chinese market and the same market access granted to Australia has been extended to all other foreign legal practices by initiatives launched in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. Further, the ChAFTA fails to lift the major regulatory barriers to foreign legal practices in China. Consequently, Australian law firms will continue to compete with other foreign law firms in the same regulatory environment. China is likely to continue to unilaterally liberalize its legal services market via the free trade zones; but such liberalization is likely to be applied to all foreign legal practices. Towards this end, the benefits that the ChAFTA would bring to Australian legal practices are likely to be two-fold: (1) increased business opportunities in cross-border transactions, and (2) strengthened confidence in doing business in China.

The Moderate Level of Foreign Banks’ Entry—Based on the Analysis of Shanghai Free Trade Zone

After the establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the effect of foreign banks’ entry on the efficiency of domestic commercial banks in China has become more evident. Choosing the first 7 domestic banks in Shanghai Free Trade Zone as study subjects this paper uses the double-effect model to confirm the existence of the moderate level of foreign banks’ entry .At the same time, with the cross items of foreign banks’ market share and owner structure (FORO), foreign banks’ market share and zone(FORZ), this paper found that when compared with joint-equity banks, the large state-owned commercial banks are found to be the quickest to enhance safety and there is no difference from whether the headquarters of domestic commercial banks are in the same place as Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone and Its Effect on Economic Growth: A Counter-Factual Approach

Together with the deepening of globalization and economic integration, trade and investment liberalization has played more important role in economic cooperation. Besides the free trade agreements among member countries, free trade zone is also considered to establish a favorable environment in order to attract foreign investment and promote economic growth of the areas laying inside and outside the zone. On the basis of economic reforming and trade liberalization initiative, China approved the establishment of Shanghai Pilot free trade zone on September 29th, 2013. The Shanghai Pilot free trade zone is the experiment area of the whole country’s national economic transition process. For the first time, many new policies and management mode were adopted in this area to examine their performance and usability. This study aims to analyze the policy’s effect of Shanghai pilot free trade zone on Shanghai economic growth. By using counter-factual method, the study compares the difference of Shanghai GDP in counter-factual scenario from the actual scenario and figures out the policy effect with the existence of the free trade zone. Therefore, the finding emphasizes the strong effect of Shanghai free trade zone on its economic growth. Understanding the economic effect of Shanghai pilot free trade zone is necessary to further up investment and trade liberalization in China.