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Recently, reporters learned from the provincial free-trade office that in the five years since the Anhui Pilot Free Trade Zone was established, it has been proactively connecting with Shanghai’s construction of the “five centers” and promoting coordinated innovative development across the Yangtze River Delta FTZs. The Yangtze River Delta FTZ Alliance released four batches of innovation cases, with Anhui contributing 11 selections in total. Focusing on integration of shipping and logistics, the Anhui FTZ pioneered nationally the “joint unloading” river-sea intermodal model, achieving unified supervision of Yangshan Port and Wuhu Port, further unleashing the transport efficiency of the “Yangtze River golden waterway.” It piloted integrated reforms for customs inspection operations on special goods across the Yangtze River Delta, saving an average of 3–5 days of clearance time per shipment and effectively promoting development of strategic emerging industries such as integrated circuits. For imported special goods for integrated circuit firms it implemented a “release-before-inspection” approach—conducting exterior inspections at Shanghai ports and localized unsealing inspections in Hefei—filing over 2,500 product entries for 18 companies and saving about 5 days clearance per shipment; this model has since been promoted nationwide by the General Administration of Customs. The Anhui FTZ pioneered the G60 collaborative innovation model for environmental technology industries in the Yangtze River Delta, jointly formulating policies for environmental technology products and defining standards for product release and promotion to achieve policy coordination and unified standards. It has developed more than 30 group standards. It took the lead in establishing a Yangtze River Delta–wide voucher conversion model for entrepreneurship and innovation vouchers; the “One-Voucher-For-All” platform has issued vouchers totaling RMB 200 million, reducing enterprises’ costs for purchasing tech intermediary services by over 50%. Industrial coordination is an important path for deeper Yangtze River Delta integration. In the Bengbu subzone of the Anhui FTZ, the Ningbo–Bengbu cooperative industrial park is being accelerated. To speed the construction of a modern industrial services system, the Bengbu subzone and the Shanghai Pudong Financial Office jointly established the Northern Anhui sub-center of the Yangtze River Delta capital market service base, exploring regional financial service coordination mechanisms for sci-tech finance, investment and financing, and listing cultivation, and providing full-life-cycle comprehensive services for companies preparing to list or already listed, aiming to build a demonstration base to accelerate listings in northern Anhui. In the Wuhu subzone, together with Shanghai Lingang, a “Cloud Legal Service Zone” has been jointly established—the country’s first cross-provincial cooperative cloud legal zone—providing full access to internationally standard legal resources to empower enterprises and advancing deeper integration of legal services across the Yangtze River Delta. The Cloud Legal Service Zone has so far provided channels linking Lingang legal resources to more than a hundred local firms. Source: Anhui Daily
