ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DISTRICTS

1. THE FREE TRADE ZONE
Shantou Free Trade Zone, situated in the southeast of Shantou Dahao peninsula and with an area of 2.34 sq/km, was approved to be set up by the State Council in January 1993. In December of the same year, the supervision facilities of the Customs passed the examination of the General Administration of the Customs and opened to operation. The Free Trade Zone is mainly developing transit trade, processing for export, shipping and warehousing business, finance and transportation business. The aim of the Free Trade Zone is to use for reference the successful experience of foreign free trade zones and build it into a modern international open zone.
For seven years since the development of Shantou Free Trade Zone, 1.07 billion RMB for basic facilities construction has been invested, creating a complete and perfect investment environment. It has established a batch of industrial enterprises mainly in the fields of new and high technologies. The Free Trade Zone has begun to take shape with functional development and business operation in good conditions. By the end of October 2000, 877 enterprises have been registered in Administration of Industry and Commerce, among which foreign-funded enterprises are 157 with the total investment of 440 million USD and 720 are domestic enterprises with the registered fund of 2.63 billion RMB.

2. THE NEW AND HI-TECH INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ZONE
As a province-level development zone approved by Guangdong Provincial Government in 1993, the New and Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, covering an area of 5.8 sq/km, is an important economic zone in Shantou. With investment of 2.5 billion RMB, a batch of hi-tech industrial enterprises have been established mainly in electronic and information products, optical-mechanical-electrical integration, biology and medicines, new materials and energy. 246 items were introduced into the zone with total contracted investment 8.98 billion RMB, among which 46% is foreign fund. A batch of new and high-tech products with their own intellectual property rights have been put into the market and they are compared to be superior with same products. There are 98 items listed into the national, provincial and city science and technology plans, 21 of which belong to the national plan.

3. NAN’AO ISLAND DEVELOPMENT EXPERIMENTAL ZONE
Situated the sea crossing of three provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan, Nan’ao, composed by Nan’ao Island and 36 isles, is the only island county in Guangdong Province, covering an area of 130.91 sq/km and a maritime space of 4,600 sq/km with 77km coastline. The backbone international seaway of West Pacific Ocean passes the coastal waters of Nao’ao..
With fine ecologic and bay resources, great wind energy and the unique tourism and aquatic resources, Nan’ao is an island development testing district of Guangdong Province and a first-grade port of our country. The sand area for tourism development is up to over 2 million sq/m and Qing’ao Bay, a high quality shoal-swimming beach, is one of the Grade-A swimming beaches in Guangdong Province and it has become a province-level vacation area. The Yellow Flower Mountains has been built into a national island forest park. More than 80 cultural relics and historic sites have been found. The products of Nan’ao cover fishes, shrimps, shells and seaweed, and high quality aquatic products like lobsters, squids, crabs and purple echinus. Nan’ao is one of the “100 strong counties for aquatic products in China”. With a 71.5% green coverage rate, it is chosen as one of the “100 strong counties for afforestation in China”. To build an ecologic island as its goal, Nan’ao is undertaking the sustainable development strategy and has been approved to be a “Guangdong Experimental Zone of Sustainable Development”.