In September 2026, the Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone's Jinyi Area marked its sixth anniversary of official operation. Despite being landlocked and far from the coast, it has connected rivers to the sea and linked Asia with Europe. As the only inland zone within the Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone, the Jinyi Area has transformed from simply enabling the "global buying and selling" of goods to proactively innovating as a world-class hub, and further to participating in and leading international rule-making—institutional innovation here continues to unlock significant economic dividends. As the smallest zone within the Zhejiang FTZ, the Jinyi Area covers just 0.3% of Jinhua's land area yet contributes 31% of the city's total foreign trade and 42% of its utilized foreign capital, helping propel Jinhua to become the eighth city in China to exceed one trillion yuan in import and export volume.

Trade Transformation: From "Selling Globally" to "Buying and Selling Globally"

From cheering flags at World Cup stadiums to mascot pendants ahead of Olympic opening ceremonies, "Yiwu-made" goods reliably appear on global shelves whenever major international events take place. During the first seven months of 2026, cross-border e-commerce exports from the Jinyi Area exceeded 106.2 billion yuan, marking a 31% year-on-year increase and already surpassing the full-year total for 2024. In the first half of 2026, the Jinyi Area achieved foreign trade imports and exports of 197.22 billion yuan, up 32.1% year-on-year. Back in 2018, Zheng Lang, founder of Daitai Supply Chain, made a decisive choice to base his warehousing and logistics operations in the Jinyi Area. Today, Daitai Supply Chain's annual direct imports have surged from 300 million yuan to over 15 billion yuan. Zheng Lang revealed that its cross-border import logistics business continues to sustain an annual growth rate of 50%. Daitai has also invested in building food and pharmaceutical repackaging plants and testing laboratories within the Jinyi Area's comprehensive bonded zone, extending operations from repackaging into full research and manufacturing capabilities. Zheng Lang projects that these new business lines could achieve 100% to 200% annual growth, potentially becoming Daitai's "second growth curve" within five years.

Behind Daitai's explosive growth lies the Jinyi Area's institutionally innovative approach targeting the entire cross-border e-commerce chain. By adopting a "consolidate good shipments" model, cross-border logistics costs in the Jinyi Area have continued to decline. Tao Guojian, Deputy Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of Jinhua Municipal Commerce Bureau and full-time deputy director of the Jinyi Area Management Committee, told reporters that the zone has established a cross-border e-commerce service platform that leverages volume to negotiate better rates with shipping lines such as Maersk, reducing per-container freight costs from 4,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan. The platform also resells container space to small and medium-sized logistics companies at minimal service fees, helping businesses cut logistics costs by 15%. Through institutional innovation, customs clearance times and costs for key product categories have also been reduced. On the import side, the zone pioneered an "optimized acceleration plus first-issue filing" model, compressing the filing cycle from over six months to under three months and cutting overall filing costs by approximately 70%. It also became the first in the nation to launch a "cross-border manifest plus customs declaration" and "inspect first, then load" digitalized consolidation model, with manifest-based supplemental loading maximizing container space utilization and reducing overall operational costs for businesses by around 15%.

"Cross-border e-commerce companies generally suffer from compliance anxiety," said Xu Tiefeng, general manager of Double Supply Chain, who has extensive experience in bonded and customs clearance operations and understands the challenges well. To address this, the Jinyi Area has leveraged the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone's online service platform to actively trial a "9610 no-invoice tax exemption plus consolidation plus multimodal transport" model, integrating functions such as "dual-title" manifest declaration, cargo consolidation, and multimodal transportation. This has created a new compliant declaration pathway for small-package exports, where eligible small and micro profit-making enterprises can see their actual corporate income tax burden reduced to as low as 2 per mille. Companies not only can initiate authorizations, confirm online, and leave data trails through the platform, but platform transaction data, customs export data, and tax management data can also be interlinked and verified.

Geographic Transformation: From "Heart of Zhejiang" to "World Hub"

Jinhua sits at the center of Zhejiang Province, earning it the title "Heart of Zhejiang," yet it has no coastline and does not border any other province. Through institutional innovation, it is now connecting Zhejiang to the world. The "Yixin'ou" China-Europe Railway Express departing from the Jinyi Area now operates 27 international routes on a regular, stable basis, reaching over 160 cities across more than 50 countries on the Eurasian continent. In the first seven months of 2026, a cumulative 1,884 trains were dispatched, and by August 7, annual export container volume had surpassed 100,000 TEUs—setting a new record for this period and maintaining the nation's top tier position. When choosing between rail and sea, companies weigh both time and cost. Reporters learned that the China-Europe Railway Express from Yiwu to Madrid, Spain, takes 18 to 20 days for the full journey, compared to roughly 30 days for the Red Sea route and up to 40 days when sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. Moreover, rail freight rates remain stable, whereas ocean shipping prices fluctuate significantly. Today, the China-Europe Railway Express serves not only as a vital complement to sea transport but also as the preferred option for high-value goods. The railway links not just Asia and Europe but also connects rivers to the sea. In the first half of 2026, sea-rail intermodal transport in the Jinyi Area exceeded 290,000 TEUs, up 50% year-on-year, cementing its function as the "Sixth Port District" of Ningbo Zhoushan Port. Because Ningbo Zhoushan Port's main harbor houses five core container port districts, the Yiwu (Suxi) International Hub Port located within the Jinyi Area serves as an inland extension of port functions, hence its designation as the "Sixth Port District." Currently, the Jinyi Area has achieved real-time data sharing on cargo inspection and release with Ningbo Zhoushan Port, enabling "direct ship loading upon arrival" and reducing logistics time by two to three days. Tao Guojian explained that containers entering Suxi Port are treated as entering Ningbo Port, and export goods upon arrival are considered already loaded aboard ship. This is also a highly market-oriented inland port; the operating company has already turned profitable. Beyond Ningbo Port, in May 2026, the inaugural "Yiwu West–Wenzhou Port–Jeddah, Saudi Arabia" sea-rail dual express route was successfully launched, with goods reaching Wenzhou Port within 24 hours and arriving at the Red Sea in 18 days, saving businesses over 15% in comprehensive logistics costs. Tao Guojian revealed that once rail connections to Wenzhou Port are established, the route can later link to near-sea waterways extending to Southeast Asia.

When port functions move inland, institutional innovation gains greater room to maneuver. The Jinyi Area has implemented one of the nation's first batches of new customs supervision pilot models for sea-rail multimodal transport, achieving mutual recognition of supervision and data exchange between inland ports and coastal ports. It also handled the nation's first "sea-rail intermodal transport + bonded logistics center + China-Europe Railway Express" transaction, reducing transport costs by 10% compared to traditional direct trucking routes. For sea-rail intermodal goods, it introduced an "end-to-end single policy" insurance service, cutting insurance premiums by 100 to 300 yuan per container compared to segment-by-segment coverage.

Innovation Transformation: From Breakthroughs to Integrated Systems

Since the inception of free trade zones, exploring replicable and scalable innovative experiences has been a core policy objective. The Jinyi Area's numerous targeted institutional innovations aimed at reducing costs and boosting efficiency for businesses are now coalescing into a new regulatory landscape, with the zone beginning to lead and shape international rules. To date, the Jinyi Area has cumulatively replicated 325 national reform pilot experiences, undertaken 196 national and provincial pilot tasks, produced 149 cases of "first orders, first examples, and first institutions" at the national and provincial levels, and generated 160 institutional innovation outcomes, with 47 recognized as provincial-level best practice cases. Additionally, three institutional innovations have been replicated nationwide and nine have been promoted across Zhejiang Province. The Jinyi Area has also begun contributing to global rule-making. In December 2025, the 80th session of the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents, and one of the practical examples underpinning this proposal was the Jinyi Area's exploration of "single-system" multimodal transport and the reform to grant negotiability to railway bills of lading. Reform is never complete, and further institutional innovations continue to be explored in the Jinyi Area. In July, two foreign business visitors completed visa processing at the Yiwu airport port visa window and entered the country—this innovation by the Jinyi Area marked the first time this was achieved at a county-level city in Zhejiang Province. Port visas primarily target foreign nationals holding ordinary passports who, due to urgent business or other reasons, were unable to obtain visas abroad in time, allowing them to apply upon arrival at the port. Foreign workers here can also find a sense of belonging. To transform foreign talent into local resources, the Jinyi Area pioneered a "practical contribution value" evaluation system and a specialized vocational competency assessment for "cross-border e-commerce livestreaming," enabling foreigners to be certified as local talent. It also established "Yijing App," the nation's first comprehensive service platform for foreign merchants, allowing them to benefit from the "visit at most once" digital advantage. To address potential disputes, the Jinyi Area established Zhejiang Province's first international trade labor dispute arbitration tribunal, exploring mediation models where foreign nationals help resolve disputes involving other foreign nationals. To better identify talent, the Jinyi Area has returned talent recognition authority to the market and enterprises; to date, 808 companies have been granted self-recognition rights, certifying 1,518 individuals, of whom 82% hold bachelor's degrees or below.

Institutional innovation centered on capital is enabling funds to flow freely across the globe from this location. In August, Yiwu officially introduced Alipay's "Enterprise Code" digitalized system for managing official expenditures. Before the end of July 2027, the one million registered market entities in Yiwu can use the service free of charge for one year, with expected fee reductions reaching hundreds of millions of yuan. Tailored to small-commodity cross-border trade's characteristics of "small orders, mixed goods, and numerous traders," the "Yiwu Pay" platform has built a business structure encompassing "cross-border RMB, cross-border foreign exchange, and cross-border digital RMB," enhancing client convenience in cross-border receipt and settlement while achieving full-process closed-loop fund control. In 2025, the "Yiwu Pay" platform completed annual cross-border payment transaction volume of $6.026 billion, up 50% year-on-year, serving more than 25,000 SMEs with costs 33% lower than the industry average; cumulative cross-border payment transaction volume has reached approximately $11.2 billion. Addressing time lags in cross-border e-commerce fund settlement, Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank pioneered a direct system integration model between banks and TikTok service providers, upgrading settlement from at least 15 working days in the traditional model to instant arrival, driving approximately 300 million yuan in additional cross-border e-commerce transaction volume in a single year.

From "selling globally" to "buying and selling globally," from the "Heart of Zhejiang" to a "World Hub," and now contributing a "Jinhua solution" to international trade rules—this landlocked region far from the sea continues to write new chapters by answering the questions of our era through institutional innovation.