In 2023, Sichuan and Chongqing jointly issued the Action Plan for Deepening Reform and Innovation Collaborative Opening-up Demonstration Zone of the Sichuan-Chongqing Pilot Free Trade Zone (2023-2025), focusing on collaborative reforms in five areas: trade and investment, logistics hubs, industrial development, open platforms, and business environment, achieving positive results.
(1) Cooperatively exploring facilitation in trade regulatory. The customs authorities in two regions have innovatively explored the integrated "Customs-Bank One-Key Pass" model, achieving cross-region handling of "e-port cards" for the first time nationwide and being selected as one of the "best practice cases" in the fifth batch of national pilot free trade zones. Additionally, they innovated the "Convenient Regulatory of Equipment Spare Parts in Comprehensive Bonded Zones" model, reducing overall customs clearance time by 25% and saving 30% in costs.
(2) Collaboratively building an inland international logistics hub. The two regions have constructed the "Sichuan-Chongqing Multimodal Transport Logistics Informatization Platform", unifying standards and service rules for multimodal transport in Sichuan and Chongqing. In 2023, the two regions jointly operated over 5,000 trains of the China-Europe Railway Express (Chengdu-Chongqing), maintaining leading national indicators in terms of transport value and container load rates. They collaborated on a pilot project for rail-sea intermodal transport under a "single bill of lading" system, issuing a total of 4,500 bills of lading worth approximately RMB 17 billion. Chongqing Guoyuan Port and Chengdu Economic and Technological Development Zone signed an agreement on a dry port to boost the turnover rate of goods transported via public waterways between the two regions by 40%.
(3) Building a high-quality open industrial system. In the financial sector, the two regions have explored mutual recognition and connectivity in foreign exchange management, jointly applying for the "Integrated Management Pilot of Capital Projects"; and launched the first New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor financing settlement application scenario, serving enterprise financing needs exceeding USD 1 billion. In the technology sector, the two regions have jointly established the Belt and Road International Technology Transfer Center and built the only provincially co-built key laboratory in China. In the medical sector, they have jointly established the Sichuan-Chongqing Traditional Chinese Medicine and Health Industry Technological Innovation Center. In the digital economy sector, the Tianfu and Chongqing data center clusters have been approved for construction, jointly promoting nine key areas of work including digital infrastructure construction.
(4) Deepening multi-level and multi-platform collaborative innovation. The six areas of China (Sichuan) Pilot Free Trade Zone and China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone, 13 collaborative reform pilot areas, and 25 interconnected innovation zones have comprehensively deepened reform, opening up, and innovative collaboration. Chongqing's Liangjiang New Area has partnered with Sichuan's Tianfu New Area to create an international business environment and an open industrial hub. Comprehensive bonded zones in areas like Chengdu High-tech Zone, Shuangliu District, and Luzhou have collaborated with Chongqing on inland waterway transportation and port trade cooperation. A union mechanism has been established among 12 adjacent regions in southern Sichuan and western Chongqing for free trade management institutions to deepen collaborative opening-up and explore the reform of the moderate separation of administrative regions and economic zones.
(5) Collaboratively building an international business environment. The two regions have benchmarked advanced international economic and trade rules, jointly promoted the construction of a cross-regional rules system, and replicated and promoted eight free trade innovative cases in both regions. They have explored a new registration model for the "Sichuan-Chongqing Opening-up and Cooperation Zone", solving the issue of enterprise investment and settlement selection through a "cloud registration with virtual addresses" method. The judicial departments of both regions jointly issued Litigation Guidelines and Typical Cases to promote uniformity in judicial standards. A series of landmark achievements such as the National Western Computing Power Dispatch Center and the International Data Portal have taken root in demonstration areas.
