By Wu Ziran

The strategy of Coordinated Development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province (or Jing-Jin-Ji), which was officially published in February of 2014, brings new opportunities to the Tianjin East Bonded Port Area. This area has made great strides to support the Jing-Jin-Ji region's coordinated development and take over non-capital functions from Beijing. SOEs and large enterprises, including Aluminum Corporation of China, China Railway Group Ltd., China State Shipbuilding Corporation, China Shenhua Energy Co. Ltd., China CNR Co. Ltd, China Minsheng Investment Corp., CITIC Securities Co. Ltd. and China Supply and Marketing Group Development Co. Ltd., have all established branches in the East Bonded Port Area. The four major centrally-administrated electric power enterprises, including China Datang Corp., China Huaneng Group, China Huadian Corp., and China Guodian Corp., have increased their investments to around tens of billions of yuan. The East Bonded Port Area has become a new platform for the Jing-Jin-Ji enterprises to share resources and cooperate. In 2015, 2,344 Jing-Jin-Ji enterprises made investments in this area, accounting for 61.9 percent of newly registered companies that year; the registered capital totaled 104.4 billion yuan, accounting for 49.4 percent of newly registered capital in 2015. Among them, 402 enterprises came from Beijing and their registered capital stood at 42.5 billion yuan, an increase of 1.7 and 2.2 times year on year, fully supporting the alleviation of Beijing's non-capital functions. One SOE will relocate its functional headquarters to the East Bonded Port Area every month. So far, 36 SOEs have established 60 functional headquarters in the area.

441 projects worth over 100 million yuan are relocated to Binhai New Area

With favorable national policies and innovative projects, enterprises have chosen to locate a large number of major projects in the East Bonded Port Area so as to expand new business fields through this platform. By the end of 2015, the accumulated number of registered enterprises had reached 6,968. In 2015, there were 3,789 newly registered enterprises, a year-on-year increase of 150 percent; the newly registered capital was 211.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 195 percent; the average registered capital of each enterprise stood at 55.82 million yuan and the number of newly established enterprises last year exceeded the total number of enterprises set up in the past seven years. As the investment projects have increased in scale, the quality of the projects has been improved significantly. In 2015, the number of projects with a registered capital of over 100 million yuan was 441, 130 more than the total number of such projects in the past seven years.

Promoting regional cooperation,

sharing advantageous resources

The East Bonded Port Area fully plays to its advantages as an important part of the only Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in northern China. The East Bonded Port Area has strengthened its strategic cooperation, integrated resources and built relationships with other areas. By actively spreading replicable experiences to other areas, the East Bonded Port Area's benefits spillover to other regions and it plays a catalytic role for regional development. In the meantime, the East Bonded Port Area has proactively explored establishing a bilateral industrial service platform, an investment cooperation mechanism and direct-sale imports to expand its sphere of influence. In this way, interconnected growth has been made both inside and outside the Tianjin FTZ. Up till now, it has reached strategic cooperation agreements with other districts, including Xiqing, Dongli, Hedong, Hongqiao and Beichen districts, and other surrounding areas, such as Anyang City in Henan Province and Changzhou Zhongjie Industrial Zone in Hebei Province.