Tianjin Binhai: the rise of a smart, open and livable maritime gateway

As China's northern maritime gateway to the world, Tianjin's port, located in Beihai New Area, is the largest port in northern China. With its great geographical advantage, the areas has been making great efforts to enter the global business arena, as well as widening access for foreign investment.

According to statistics, from the opening of the pilot free trade zone in Binhai New Area in 2015 to the end of 2018, 2,159 foreign-invested companies were established in the district, with contractual foreign capital amounting to $47.55 billion. Ninety-nine percent of them were established via a document filing mechanism.

The pilot free trade zone replaced the examination and approval procedures with a document filing system for overseas investment projects of less than $300 million, which means applicants can finish all the formalities within a day.

Such policies have brought advantages to the Chinese public. In a cold chain storage container of Tianjin Port Sunlon Food International Trading company, fruits imported from Southeast Asia and the world have been sent to the table of people in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, as well as other northern areas, providing Chinese public fresher and cheaper food.

China's neighboring countries, especially those along the Belt and Road, have also benefited from the new area's openness. Jointly built by Tianjin TEDA Investment Holding Co, Ltd and China-African Fund, the China-Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, which began construction in 2008, has directly offered jobs to over 3,500 people and created 30,000 job opportunities through its gathered industries.

According to statistics, over the past decade, the economic zone has attracted more than 1 billion dollars of investment with a total output value of about 1.2 billion dollars. Over 1 billion Egyptian Pounds (about $56 million) in taxes have been paid to Egypt.

"Thanks to TEDA's own experiences that have been applied to the cooperation zone, a vital new city will soon grow up in the desert on the shore of the Red Sea," Zhang Bingjun, board chairman of TEDA Investment Holding Co Ltd, told Xinhua.