On 15 April Li Baihong quit his job at a large technology company, travelled to Chengmai county in north-western Hainan with three suitcases and filed to register a company the same day. His business licence arrived on 22 April, he told Cailian Press. Three computers on his desk run three lines of business: a WeChat mini-game, more than ten apps on Apple’s App Store and a digitalisation contract with a traditional manufacturer worth about RMB 150,000. The games and apps have so far earned RMB 50,000–60,000.
Li is one of the types of founder Hainan’s provincial government wants to attract. Its measures to support AI “OPC” development (document 琼工信规〔2026〕3号), issued in May by the provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology with three other agencies, took effect on 20 June and run until the end of 2028. OPC stands for “One Person Company” (一人公司). The biggest grant in the document, a provincial award of up to RMB 8 million, goes to the communities that house such firms, not to the founders.
For a solo founder weighing a move to the island, the measures’ real value lies in cheap space, subsidised computing and a modest loan subsidy. The 15% corporate tax rate the policy invokes is out of reach for a one-person firm, and for a small, profitable firm it is not the lowest rate available anyway.
Who gets the money
The document defines an AI OPC as a micro-enterprise that develops or uses AI tools, with “generally” no more than five staff, so the label is looser than its English name. It asks cities and counties to build OPC communities of, in principle, at least 3,000 square metres, each offering at least 200 low-cost workspaces. Each year the province will assess the communities and select one to three for a one-off award of up to RMB 8 million, twice the RMB 4 million that Chengmai county offers towards building a high-standard OPC site, according to the Economic Daily.
Founders get narrower help. A qualifying OPC that obtains an unsecured credit loan of up to RMB 10 million through the Hainan smart-finance service platform receives an interest subsidy of 1 percentage point of the principal a year, for no longer than one year and no more than three times. On a RMB 1 million loan that is RMB 10,000. The one-year loan prime rate, the benchmark for Chinese bank lending, was 3.0% at its 20 October fixing, the People’s Bank of China announced, so the subsidy equals a third of the benchmark rate.
A crowded and loosely counted field
China had 618 OPC communities, hubs for one-person companies, by June 2026, up from 95 in March. Chengmai was the only county in the report’s top ten. Its hub, in Hainan Ecological Software Park, opened in March 2026 and was the province’s first.
How many firms it holds depends on who is counting. On 21 October Cailian Press put the Chengmai hub at more than 400 OPC entities and 700 founders; a week later the Economic Daily gave 533 entities and 422 founders. The province’s targets for 2028 are ten or more quality communities, more than a hundred quality OPC firms and 1,000 OPC innovation talents across the island. Those targets count “quality” (优质) firms, a narrower category than registrations.
The Economic Daily also reported that many OPC sites around China use free desks to draw tenants while relying on property rent for their core income, a model it called geared to short-term profit. Hainan’s assessment will weigh infrastructure, service quality, industry clustering and actual operating results, but the document does not say how much each counts.
The three-person tax test
The tax promise is where a true one-person firm runs into trouble. The measures pledge to help eligible OPCs claim Hainan’s “double 15%” tax regime in full. Its two halves are a 15% corporate income tax rate for encouraged-industry companies registered and substantively operating in the free trade port, and a cap of 15% on the effective personal income tax burden of high-end and shortage talent on a provincial list, under a January 2025 finance ministry and tax administration extension. Both run to 31 December 2027.
Substantive operation has a headcount test. Under a 2025 notice from Hainan’s tax bureau, finance department and market regulator, a company with fewer than ten workers needs at least three of them to live in Hainan for a cumulative 183 days in the tax year. A company of one cannot pass it. A firm that opens or closes mid-year and operates for under six months must instead show residence for half its operating days, the provincial tax bureau said in an explanatory note; the three-worker minimum stays.
The notice also requires firms claiming the rate to have their corporate income tax assessed on their accounting records (查账征收), and the 2020 notice that created the rate requires the firm’s main business to be on Hainan’s encouraged-industry catalogue and to supply at least 60% of its revenue.
For most small founders, Hainan’s 15% rate matters less than it sounds. Under a national tax rule that runs until the end of 2027, any company in China pays an effective 5% on its profits as long as it stays under three ceilings: RMB 3 million in annual taxable income, 300 staff and RMB 50 million in assets. Almost every one-person company falls well below all three. Only firms in restricted or prohibited industries are excluded.
A one-person company also carries a personal risk. Under China’s revised Company Law, in force since 1 July 2024, a sole shareholder who cannot prove the company’s money is kept separate from their own is personally liable for its debts.
That applies to foreign-owned companies too. Zhang Liang, a law professor at Ningbo University, told People’s Daily Online that some owners take business payments through personal WeChat or bank accounts. Where that hides income, he said, the tax authorities can claim back taxes, late fees and fines of 0.5 to 5 times the unpaid tax. The safeguard is simple: run all business money through the company’s own bank account and keep proper accounts.
What a founder should model
A founder planning to stay solo should price a move to Hainan on what the measures actually offer OPCs: rent-free space for a set period, which communities are encouraged to provide; “intelligence” vouchers, which cities and parks may issue to cut the cost of computing power, models, training data and AI tools; and the loan subsidy.
For a company that qualifies as a small low-profit enterprise, corporate tax should be modelled at the national effective rate of 5%. Hainan’s 15% rate becomes the better deal once a firm outgrows those thresholds, and then only if it passes the catalogue test and has three workers living on the island. The RMB 8 million award goes to the community, not its tenants.
Li, for now, says his cash flow is healthy enough that he has no urgent need for outside money. “If the venture fails, so what?” he told Cailian Press. “I just lose a bit of my own time.” The province set itself a nearer deadline: about three quality OPC communities by the end of 2026.
Related article: From Internet Satellites to AI Workers: Five Technology Stories from Hainan
