On August 2, 2019, the State Council officially issued the Overall Plan of China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone and approved the establishment of Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone (Lianyungang Area included). The Overall Plan of China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone clearly specified, for Liangyungang Area, “3 Major Functional Orientations, 3 Major Development Blocks and 6 Key Tasks”.

I.3 Major Functional Orientations: build a pivotal Eurasia international transportation hub, an open gateway gathered with high-quality elements and an exchange and cooperation platform for countries (regions) along the “Belt and Road”.

II. 3 Major Development Blocks: Lianyungang Area covers a land area of 20.27km2 (including the 2.44km2 large Lianyungang Comprehensive Bonded Zone). It’s made of 3 blocks, namely: the 14.84km2 Development District Block focusing on the advanced manufacturing such as biomedicine, new materials, new energy and high-end equipment, as well as modern services such as modern logistics, cross-border e-commerce, technology services and financial services; the 1km2 Lianyun District Block focusing on the modern services such as modern logistics, health care, financial services, leisure, tourism, business support, big data and cross-border e-commerce; the 4.43km2 Port Block focusing on modern services such as port and shipping logistics, which aims to build a logistics center integrating international transportation, distribution and transshipment, warehousing, port processing, trading and supporting services. 

III. 6 Key Tasks: Lianyungang Area undertakes six pilot tasks of accelerating the transformation of government functions, deepening the reform of investment, promoting trade restructuring and upgrading, intensifying the opening and innovation of finance, promoting innovation-driven development  and actively serving the national strategy.

Based on the Overall Plan of China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone, Lianyungang Area has sorted out its goal: namely, to center on the institutional innovation and adopt the basic requirement of being replicable and promotion-worthy, benchmark to the international advanced rules, and maximize the synergy of openness, reform and innovation. By 2022, the Pilot Free Trade Zone will be built with more perfected open economic system and higher level of investment and trade liberalization and facilitation. The Pilot Free Trade Zone will become a benchmark in market-orientation, rule of law and internationalized business environment. A new round of holistic opening-up will be formed to accelerate the gathering of high-quality factor resources. New breakthroughs will be made in the construction of the new Eurasian land-sea combined transport, international shipping, international logistics and international trade platform. The capacity and level of serving the “Belt and Road Initiative” will be given significant improvement. And new progress will be achieved in docking into the Yangtze River Delta Regional Integration.