After Crippling Hong Kong, Beijing Wants to Turn Hainan Island Into a Free Trade Port

This aerial photo taken on May 17, 2021 shows a cargo ship loaded with containers leaving a port in Haikou in China's southern Hainan province. Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

In June last year, while pushing its national security law in Hong Kong, China announced a master plan to build Hainan, the country’s southern island province, into a free trade port by 2025.

Local authorities released a progress report recently, claiming that the institutional framework of a free trade port system has been “basically established,” and Hainan will become another Hong Kong when the facilities become “more mature.”

Hainan Free Trade Port Must ‘Adhere to Socialism’

When announcing the master plan at a press briefing on June 8 of last year, Liu Cigui, the Party chief of Hainan, stressed that unlike many existing free trade ports in the world that are under a capitalist system, the Hainan port would be under “the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”