Infrastructure improved

Wu Yangkai, a 9-year-old living in Haikou, often tells his friends that he owns a "magic private bullet train" to bring his father back home.

His father, Wu Jing, who works in Sanya, 300 km away, comes back home on weekends. Before 2015, it took Wu Jing four hours by bus to return home every Friday after work. By the time he arrived his son was asleep. On Sunday, Wu Jing had to hurry back to Sanya after lunch. The father and son had only one and a half days together, something they both wished could be longer.

Their wish was granted at the end of 2010 after the Hainan High-Speed Railway East Line was put into operation on December 30. It cut the journey time between Sanya and Haikou to one hour and 22 minutes. Now Wu Jing can enjoy Friday dinners with his family and leave for the office early Monday morning. In the little boy's eyes, since both the terminal stations are near the door step of his home and his father's office, the train is like a "tailored private bullet train."

The Wu's are not the only beneficiaries. The line was further expanded into a 653-km loop railway along the coastline of Hainan at the end of 2015. It is the world's first high-speed railway on an island. Connecting almost all renowned scenic spots and 12 major cities in Hainan, the railway serves 87.3 percent of Hainan's population. By the end of 2017, passengers had made 250 million trips.

Besides railways, other transportation sectors have grown rapidly in Hainan in the past three decades. In 1988, there was only one airport with four routes linking Hainan and the Chinese mainland. Passenger throughput was 50,000 each year.

Now, there are three airports with 200 aviation routes and 351 sea lanes linking the island with the outside world. Passenger throughput surged to 39.38 million in 2017. Expressways and high-speed railways enable passengers to reach any place on the island in three hours.

A testing ground

Many attribute Hainan's dramatic change to reform and opening up. "For Hainan, as an island economy, opening up is the key to its survival and development," Chi Fulin, President of the China Institute of Reform and Development (CIRD), told Beijing Review.

According to Chi, Hainan is "the best testing ground" for China's reform and opening up. In the early years of its establishment as an SEZ and a province, Hainan enjoyed many preferential policies. "It has proved that the wider Hainan's door is opened, the faster it develops," said Chi.

He believes that as long as Hainan maintains its green development drive, it will become a symbol of China's efforts to achieve high-quality development.

Gan Lu, head of the Hainan Reform and Opening Up Research Department of the CIRD, echoes Chi's view. She calls for more eco-friendly policies to develop new industries in Hainan such as offering duty-free commodities to local residents, allowing only new-energy vehicles by 2020, prohibiting usage of pesticides and promoting green agriculture.

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