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E-mail Beijing Review, April 10, 2018
Wang Fangquan, a retiree living in Haikou, capital of China's southernmost Hainan Province, rushed to see the newly renovated Sanjiaochi Plaza on March 25, days before it was formally inaugurated. The plaza, a triangular open field in the city center, is a landmark of Hainan's establishment as China's largest special economic zone (SEZ) and youngest province 30 years ago.
Once a sleepy island prefecture of Guangdong Province, Hainan was upgraded to a national SEZ on April 13, 1988. News of the move at the time spread like wildfire across China. A total of 100,000 ambitious entrepreneurs flooded across the Qiongzhou Strait between the mainland and the island pursuing their "Hainan dream." Sanjiaochi, then the biggest open job fair in Hainan, was the first stop for most newcomers to seek employment and business opportunities. Wang was one of them.
"Many newcomers spent their first night here in the open air 30 years ago," Wang recalled. Later, the marketplace became a dilapidated and disorderly public space, inundated with unlicensed stalls. What's worse, the lake nearby was polluted due to lack of protection, making it a place to be shunned by most locals.
But things have changed in the last four months. The once shabby open market has been transformed into a picturesque park. This is one of the local government's latest moves to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Hainan's becoming a province and an SEZ.
"It's awesome," said Wang, who was astonished by the dramatic facelift of Sanjiaochi.
Sanjiaochi is a microcosm of Hainan. In the 1980s, Hainan was an impoverished and backward island without a traffic light. According to a report by Xinhua News Agency on April 1, 17 percent of its population didn't have their basic needs met and 85 percent of consumer commodities were shipped in from the other side of the strait at that time.
The turning point came in 1988. Many revolutionary policies, including the shareholding reform of state-owned companies and duty-free shops, have been tested first on the island.
Hainan has since grown by leaps and bounds. According to official statistics, Hainan's GDP totaled 446.25 billion yuan ($72.02 billion) in 2017, 78 times that of 1988. Its per-capita GDP amounted to $7,179 last year, 37 times that of 1988. The average annual growth rate of its per-capita GDP in the past five years was 7.2 percent, higher than the national level. The poverty rate was slashed to 1.5 percent, 1.6 percentage points lower than the national average.
Hainan, powered by 12 pillar industries including tourism, modern agriculture and high-end healthcare, is now firmly on the path toward prosperity.
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