Following the release of the Master Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port on 1 June 2020, Hainan has spent nearly six years building the headline architecture of the Free Trade Port. The post-closure framework now includes island-wide customs operations, expanded zero-tariff treatment for qualifying goods, the 30% processing value-added rule, and preferential tax policies for qualifying encouraged-industry enterprises and eligible high-end and urgently needed talent.
Hainan also maintains a separate visa-free entry framework for eligible nationals from 86 countries, with permitted purposes including tourism, business, exchanges, family visits, medical treatment, exhibitions and sports competitions.
The next step is usability
A policy system only becomes commercially valuable when foreign companies can use it in practice. They need to be able to understand the rules in English, move funds through regulated channels, hire recognised foreign professionals, process permits efficiently and complete basic government procedures without being held up or blocked by passport or digital-identity issues.
This is why Hainan’s new three-year international services plan matters.
It is not about introducing another major incentive for the Free Trade Port. Instead, it focuses on the service layer that will determine whether foreign companies and foreign professionals can actually use the system in daily life.
The plan was issued on 6 April 2026 as 琼营商办〔2026〕18号 by the Office of the Hainan Provincial CPC Committee’s Business Environment Optimisation Leadership Group. It sets out 30 key measures across seven areas. At an official press conference on 28 April, Hainan officials said the plan also contains 80 specific sub-measures. While the public document confirms the main structure, the full itemised list of 80 sub-measures has not been published in the version currently available.
The plan is not a law. It does not override national immigration, employment, tax or foreign-exchange rules. It is a provincial implementation programme aimed at improving how foreign-related services are delivered inside Hainan’s Free Trade Port framework.
The plan focuses on the practical systems that sit beneath the Free Trade Port policies
Hainan’s main Free Trade Port incentives are already in place or governed separately. The new services plan does not change the 15% corporate income tax policy for qualifying encouraged-industry enterprises, the zero-tariff framework for qualifying goods or the island-wide customs operations framework.
Instead, it focuses on the systems foreign companies and professionals need in order to use those policies.
The plan covers seven areas:
- foreign-related policy and legal services,
- the international language environment,
- government service access,
- foreign-invested enterprise services,
- services for foreign nationals,
- tourism and consumption services, and
- implementation safeguards.
If that sounds broad, it is. But the best way to read the plan is not as a list of lifestyle improvements for foreigners. It is an effort to make the Free Trade Port’s operating environment easier to navigate.
For a foreign company, that means clearer policy translations, help with enterprise registration, access to government service platforms, cross-border settlement channels, professional hiring systems and clearer compliance supervision.
For a foreign professional, it means work-permit handling, professional qualification recognition, passport-based service access, digital identity, permanent resident card usability, medical insurance payment channels and daily administrative services.
This is the central point. Hainan is no longer only promoting the Free Trade Port’s policy package. It is now trying to build the service infrastructure that makes that package usable.
What is already live
Several parts of that infrastructure already exist.
Hainan’s international services portal, en.hainan.gov.cn, went live in December 2025. Official reporting said the portal integrates 29 foreign-related business systems and websites, links to the Haiyiban international services window, and provides 44 high-frequency service items and 95 Chinese-English guides and service entries.
At the 28 April press conference, Hainan officials said the 海易办, or Haiyiban, international service zone and the English version of the 企航自贸港, or Qihang Free Trade Port, investment platform were already online.
These platforms do not, by themselves, show that foreign users can already move through Hainan’s systems smoothly. They do however, show the administrative direction: Hainan is trying to move foreign-related services away from fragmented access points and into more centralised platforms for enterprises and foreign users.
The plan also says Hainan will translate foreign-related policies and explanatory materials into English, in principle, within three months of official publication. The qualifier is important. The Chinese text uses 原则上, meaning “in principle”, so this should be treated as a policy commitment rather than a strict legal deadline.
Even so, if this is implemented consistently, it would be significant. One of the biggest barriers for foreign companies is not the lack of Hainan policies. It is the difficulty of knowing which version of a policy is current, which agency issued it, whether an English version is authoritative and how it applies to a specific business activity.
A consistent English policy pipeline would not solve that problem completely. But it would reduce the first layer of uncertainty.
Credential recognition is the most commercially relevant talent measure
One of the most commercially relevant talent measures is Hainan’s proposed system for recognising overseas professional credentials.
At the 28 April press conference, Zhu Daohong of the Hainan Provincial CPC Talent Development Bureau said Hainan had selected 105 overseas professional qualifications from 22 countries, plus Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, for comparison with Hainan’s 职称, or professional title, system.
The sectors named were healthcare, pharmaceuticals, finance and big data.
They include regulated and high-skill fields where foreign qualifications may not automatically translate into local career mobility.
According to the official explanation, Hainan’s system would compare selected overseas credentials with corresponding professional-title categories in the province. It is designed to reduce or waive oral-defence steps and accept employer review results, with applications handled through Haiyiban.
This could become a useful tool if it works as described. Foreign professionals do not only need permission to enter China or work in Hainan. In many industries, they also need their qualifications to be understood within China’s own professional hierarchy.
But the measure should not be overstated. Zhu described the credential-recognition work as 探索性工作, or exploratory work. No full public credential-mapping list has been found in Chinese or English. Public sources reviewed so far also do not provide a clear application timeline, appeal process or evidence of completed cases.
The safe reading is this: Hainan has identified credential recognition as an operating issue for the Free Trade Port and has announced a framework for addressing it. The system is not yet mature enough to be treated as a settled route for individual applicants.
Finance and the EF account system
The EF Account, or Electronic Fence account, is one of Hainan’s core financial-infrastructure tools for the Free Trade Port. It is designed to support cross-border fund movement under the Free Trade Port’s separate account structure, while maintaining the broader regulatory boundary between Hainan and the mainland.
The system is already active. At an official Hainan government press event on 26 March 2026, officials said that 990 EF accounts had been opened since the policy was introduced, with cumulative business volume exceeding RMB 450 billion and fund transfers involving 99 countries and regions. During the first 100 days after island-wide customs operations began, EF account business volume reached RMB 137.6 billion, including more than RMB 115.2 billion across the “first line” and more than RMB 22.4 billion across the “second line.”
EF accounts do not mean ordinary foreign employees can freely move personal money in and out of China. The account structure includes different sub-types. The EFE account is for institutions registered inside the Hainan Free Trade Port. A separate EFF sub-type covers overseas individuals and foreign talent recognised by the Free Trade Port, but ordinary foreign employees who do not fall into those recognised categories are not clearly covered by that route.
For most individuals, personal foreign-exchange and remittance rules remain governed by national SAFE rules.
Hainan’s Free Trade Port incentives are only useful if capital, goods, people and information can move through workable channels. Customs closure addresses goods. EF accounts address regulated capital movement. Credential recognition addresses professional mobility. The services plan tries to connect these pieces into a more usable operating environment.
What still needs to be implemented
The plan is important partly because it shows what still needs to be built.
Some measures are live. Others remain targets. That distinction should not be blurred.
Passport-based online identity verification is described as an area to explore. English-staffed service areas in Haikou, Sanya, Danzhou and key industrial parks are policy targets, not yet confirmed as fully operational. Short-term SIM card packages for foreign nationals are also listed as a commitment, but no specific launched product has been verified. The English version of Haiyidui is a target, while the Chinese platform is already live.
Work-permit mutual recognition refers to cooperation with regions including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. But no published implementation agreement, MOU or operating procedure has been found. At this stage, it is a policy direction, not a completed mechanism that foreign workers can rely on.
Employer credit supervision is another area to watch. The plan says Hainan will establish a credit supervision system for entities employing foreign nationals. That may become important for employer compliance, foreign hiring and worker protection. But without implementing rules, it is not yet possible to say what consequences the system will carry, which employers it will affect, or whether it will create restrictions, incentives or blacklist-type consequences.
Why this matters now
Hainan’s Free Trade Port is entering a stage where the existence of policies is no longer the main question.
For foreign investors, the issue is whether the system can support real operations. That means entity registration, banking, settlement, customs procedures, hiring, compliance, policy access and problem resolution. A tax incentive may attract attention. But it does not complete a bank process, translate a regulation, recognise a professional qualification or clear an identity check.
For foreign professionals, the question is similar. The most relevant parts of the plan are not the soft lifestyle measures. They are the measures that affect whether an overseas qualification can be recognised, whether work-permit procedures become more flexible, whether passport-based identity works online, whether English government service access improves and whether administrative systems can handle foreign users more consistently.
That does not mean the plan should be read as proof that Hainan has solved these issues. It should be read as a map of the issues Hainan now sees as central to the Free Trade Port’s next implementation stage.
This creates a useful benchmark. Over the next three years, the practical test will be whether core Free Trade Port policies appear in English within the stated window, whether foreign users can complete more procedures with passports or foreign permanent resident cards, whether the credential-recognition list becomes public, whether EF account access continues to expand, whether work-permit cooperation becomes operational and whether employer credit supervision is implemented with clear rules.
Hainan’s Free Trade Port does not lack policies. It has tax incentives, island-wide customs operations, zero-tariff channels, visa-free entry and cross-border finance tools. The task now is making those tools easier for foreign companies and foreign professionals to use in practice.
This is why the new services plan matters. Not because it shows Hainan has become fully international, or because every measure is already complete. It matters because Hainan has now made usability a central part of the Free Trade Port’s next implementation stage.
Related article: How Hainan’s 30% Rule Is Beginning to Shape Business Decisions
