Hainan Business Registrations and Goods Trade Rise After Customs Shift

FTZ News: Hainan registered more businesses and recorded faster goods-trade growth in the first nine months of 2026, following the launch of island-wide special customs operations in December 2025. Provincial officials reported the figures at a briefing in Haikou on October 18.

The island added 238,000 market entities during the period, a 34.1% increase from a year earlier. New enterprises accounted for 186,000 of the total, up 79.7%, Wang Fengli, deputy director of the Free Trade Port Working Committee Office, said. Wang also reported that 22 foreign-funded companies on the Fortune Global 500 list and 139 corporate headquarters had established operations on the island.

The customs changes have expanded zero-tariff treatment to 74% of tariff lines, according to officials. The exemption for goods processed on the island has also been extended to 11 industries. Meanwhile, transactions through multifunctional free trade accounts have exceeded 900 billion yuan (about $135 billion).

Goods trade reached 285.44 billion yuan in the first three quarters, up 49.8% year on year. Services trade totaled 56.95 billion yuan, an increase of 11.7%, with digital and maintenance exports contributing to growth, according to figures presented by the provincial commerce department.

Officials also pointed to new seventh-freedom air routes and upgrades to the island’s air and sea hubs. Biomanufacturing and hydrogen energy projects are in development, while authorities say Hainan’s four main industries are expanding their supply chains.

The figures offer an early measure of business activity since the customs shift, though they do not by themselves show how much of the growth resulted from the new rules. The longer-term test will be whether companies make greater use of Hainan as a base for processing, trade and services.