HOHHOT, April 11 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday launched the China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ), a key strategic move to deepen reform, advance high-standard opening up, and foster high-quality development.

As China's 23rd pilot FTZ, the new zone is designed to leverage Inner Mongolia's role as a key bridgehead for the country's opening up to the north. It aims to be developed into a high-level FTZ within three to five years, featuring streamlined investment and trade, a robust innovation ecosystem, competitive industrial clusters, and vibrant international exchanges.

Under the overall plan, the pilot FTZ spans a total of 119.74 square kilometers across three designated zones: 76.28 square kilometers in the regional capital Hohhot, 25.11 square kilometers in the inland port of Manzhouli, and 18.35 square kilometers in the inland port of Erenhot.

"The main goal in 2026 is to upgrade comprehensive bonded zones, expand cross-border e-commerce and construct the China-Mongolia economic cooperation zone to facilitate high-standard opening up to the north," said Liu Yongming, deputy director of the regional commerce department.

ENGINE FOR HIGH-QUALITY DEVELOPMENT

Among the three zones in the new pilot FTZ, the bonded zone in Hohhot prioritizes strategic emerging industries, including new energy, new materials, biomedicine and next-generation information technology, aiming to become an innovation cluster for high-quality development of distinctive industries.

The Inner Mongolia Data Exchange Center is laying the groundwork for a basic platform aimed at facilitating the global expansion of the computing power industry. This provincial-level data trading institution has attracted 1,050 ecological enterprises, achieving a cumulative transaction volume of 1.18 billion yuan (about 172.7 million U.S. dollars).

"Following the approval of this pilot FTZ, we intend to establish a negative list for cross-border data trading to encourage the legal and compliant circulation of data elements across national borders," said Fan Yuxiong, deputy general manager of the exchange center. He added that they will also explore areas like commodity traceability and logistics data sharing with Russia and Mongolia.

The biopharmaceutical sector is also poised for a breakthrough with the launch of the pilot FTZ. In an industrial park in the Horinger New Area, Inner Mongolia Wanrui Biotechnology Co., Ltd. has leveraged the region's abundant horse resources to turn animal serum, a biomedical "cell feed," into export products.

Such products have already been exported to Russia, and clients from Saudi Arabia are currently testing the products, while business negotiations with customers in Southeast Asia are slated for May.

"Our technology is on par with top international brands," said Wang Zhen, the director of public affairs at the company. "What we lack is the endorsement of international certification."

He said that he is looking forward to the establishment of a dedicated window within the pilot FTZ to provide guidance on FDA certification for export enterprises, and to offer certification subsidies drawing on the experience of other provinces and regions.

UPGRADED PORTS FOR GREATER EFFICIENCY

Inner Mongolia boasts 20 opening-up ports, which serve as the gateway for Inner Mongolia to connect with both domestic and international markets. Among them, freight throughput at 14 land ports hit a record high in 2025, reaching 132 million tonnes.

The China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) prioritizes upgrading the key ports of Manzhouli, Erenhot and Ganqimaodu to provide solid support for the construction of the pilot FTZ.

As China's busiest rail port for China-Russian trade and a key gateway on the eastern China-Europe Railway Express route, Manzhouli will focus on specialized industries, including imported resource processing, cross-border tourism, cross-border finance and port services.

It aims to become a major gateway to Northeast Asia and Europe, as well as a key platform for trilateral cooperation between China, Russia and Mongolia.

Data from Manzhouli Customs shows that 4,867 China-Europe freight trains passed through the port in 2025, an 11.2-percent increase year on year, handling 506,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of goods. Notably, the number of returning trains reached 2,977, the highest in the country and a 21-percent jump from the previous year.

This efficiency is partly due to a deep integration of 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. A panoramic sensing system now supports cargo monitoring, smart dispatching and risk warnings. The port's daily transshipment capacity has doubled to reach 840 TEUs, while inspection time for an entire train has been cut to less than one minute.

In a significant move to boost people-to-people ties, an international passenger train linking Manzhouli with Zabaikalsk in Russia resumed operations on March 8, 2026. The service, currently scheduled for two round-trips per week, covers the 9.8-kilometer journey in about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, Erenhot, China's largest land port on the Mongolian border, will focus on international trade, logistics, cross-border tourism and medical services as it seeks to develop into a key hub along the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor and a model of friendly cooperation with neighboring countries.

The port launched a cross-border e-commerce international transport link in 2025. It routes goods through a centralized distribution center in Erenhot, saving delivery time by over 200 percent and reducing transportation costs by more than 50 percent.

The streamlined procedure has enabled goods from major Chinese e-commerce platforms to undergo customs clearance and be shipped directly to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital. The system now processes an average of 5,000 cross-border e-commerce parcels daily, making next-day delivery to Mongolia a reality.

The Ganqimaodu port, China's largest for coal imports from Mongolia, is focused on developing an energy corridor. Construction of the Ganqimaodu-Gashuunsukhait cross-border railway started in May 2025, marking the second new rail link between the two nations in nearly 70 years.

A pioneer in China's smart port development, Ganqimaodu has launched the country's first cross-border transport route using driverless automated guided vehicles (AGVs). In 2026, the port will launch a pilot "digital intelligent one-stop channel" reform to simplify entry procedures for foreign drivers.

CORE HUB FOR NORTHERN OPENING UP

Following the launch of the new pilot FTZ, the three comprehensive bonded zones in Hohhot, Ordos and Manzhouli are targeting 12.2 billion yuan in bonded processing and trade value this year, up 20 percent year on year. Cross-border e-commerce turnover is set to exceed 5 billion yuan, backed by streamlined logistics to support next-day delivery to Mongolia and one-week delivery to Russia.

The region also aims to add over 3 million tonnes of new value-added processing of imported resources. Furthermore, the border trade zones at ports like Mandula and Ganqimaodu are scheduled to begin operations by the end of the year.

Since the establishment of the first pilot FTZ in Shanghai in 2013, China's pilot FTZs have achieved remarkable progress in institutional innovation. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), over 200 institutional innovations were rolled out, with landmark measures such as the negative list for foreign investment optimizing the country's business environment.

As China outlined its priorities for the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), the country is moving to advance high-standard opening up and further "open wider to the outside world."

"From the southern coast to the northern border areas, China's FTZ network is evolving from individual breakthroughs to systematic integration, which injects strong impetus to expand high-standard opening up," said Fan Lijun, director of the Belt and Road Initiative Research Institute at Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences.