It has been seven months since the Inner Mongolia Pilot Free Trade Zone was approved. What are the highlights of its development?

On November 12, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region held a press conference to introduce the construction progress of the China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone in the seven months since its approval. The reporter learned from the press conference that the implementation rate of the 81 reform pilot tasks in the pilot zone is expected to reach more than 62% that year. As an important bridgehead for my country's opening up to the north, the Pilot Free Trade Zone continues to consolidate and improve its strategic functions. A number of institutional innovations with local characteristics have been implemented at an accelerated pace, and the dividends of opening up have been continuously released.

Driven by the opening up of the Pilot Free Trade Zone, Inner Mongolia's foreign trade has achieved rapid growth. In the first 10 months of this year, the region's total foreign trade import and export value increased by 29.5% year-on-year, a growth rate 9.5 percentage points higher than the national average, ranking fifth in the country; the import and export freight volume at land ports reached 133 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 26.1%, ranking first in the country; the total number of transit China-Europe freight trains ranked first in the country, accounting for 49.6% of the country's total. The import and export volume with Russia and Mongolia increased by 72.2% and 44.9% respectively; the import and export volume with the countries co-building the “Belt and Road” increased by 39.9% year-on-year. The trade performance with Russia, Mongolia and the countries co-building the “Belt and Road” was outstanding.

New business formats such as border trade and bonded logistics are booming, with trade volume increasing by 65.4% and 56.1% respectively, and the scale of on-site processing in the inbound commodity zone continues to expand. The institutional layout has been continuously improved. The autonomous region has recently approved the establishment of Baotou and Ordos Free Trade Pilot Zone Joint Development Zone, relying on the good industrial foundation and opening potential of the two places to further expand the application scenarios of institutional innovation and consolidate the foundation for industrial development.

Each area carries out differentiated construction based on functional positioning:

The Hohhot area gives full play to the unique advantages of the computing power hub and the free trade pilot zone policy, focuses on promoting multi-field collaborative innovation of green computing power, carries out integrated innovation of the entire dairy industry chain, promotes the external expansion of the biomedical industry, and focuses on creating an innovation cluster for the high-quality development of characteristic industries.

Based on the advantages of ports along the border, the Manzhouli Area has deepened the innovation of the port customs clearance system, iteratively upgraded the border trade system, improved cross-border financial services along the border, promoted the quality and expansion of foreign trade, and implemented policies to prosper the border and enrich the people.

Erenhot Area takes advantage of its location advantage in the northward opening-up corridor, continues to improve port customs clearance efficiency, enriches foreign trade formats, cultivates real processing industries, accelerates the economic transformation of the corridor, expands cultural exchanges in cross-border cultural tourism, education, and medical fields, and consolidates the hub function of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.

A series of reform and innovation achievements that are recognizable to Inner Mongolia have been implemented one after another.

In terms of green energy, Inner Mongolia was approved to carry out green power certificate transactions, becoming the first province in the country to organize "green power + green certificate" transactions simultaneously; it released two national standards for the recycling of decommissioned wind power equipment, filling the gap in standards in the domestic new energy industry recycling field.

In the field of computing power industry, the country's first green computing power full-stack AI platform and the country's largest confidential Token factory have been launched one after another. The Inner Mongolia regional node of the National Computing Power Interconnection has been approved for construction, opening up a key channel to connect the national unified computing power market.

In terms of financial openness, pilot projects for high-level opening up of cross-border trade and facilitation of foreign exchange receipts and payments were implemented, mobile payments between China and Mongolia were interconnected, and the first multilateral central bank digital currency bridge cross-border RMB remittance business was successfully completed, with transaction costs halved.

In terms of specialty industries, breakthroughs have been made in dairy germplasm innovation, new progress has been made in the introduction of bovine frozen semen germplasm resources, and independent research and development of infant probiotic strains has filled industry gaps.

In terms of port customs clearance, the construction of fast customs clearance systems for entry and exit vehicles at highway ports in Manzhouli and Erenhot has been launched, and innovative models such as "cross-border e-commerce + TIR" and "port + unloading site" joint supervision have been launched to create a model for fast customs clearance at land ports.