The Harbin area of the China Heilongjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone (Harbin FTZ) in Harbin, capital of China's northernmost Heilongjiang province, has seen rapid development over the past two years.
 
Since its establishment on Aug 30, 2019, the implementation rate of various tasks in the Harbin FTZ in the "Overall Plan for the Construction of Pilot Free Trade Zones in Heilongjiang Province" has been 100 percent.
 
The Harbin FTZ has copied 206 practices from Shanghai and other pilot free trade zones, and has launched 93 system innovation cases.
 
Among them, four domestically leading or pioneering institutional innovations, including creativity and intellectual property acquisition and incubation mechanisms, were selected and reported to the Ministry of Commerce.
 
A total of 25 institutional innovations, including domestic foreign exchange account settlement items, were selected as provincial-level innovation cases.
 
Due to the innovative business environment of the Harbin FTZ, the number of registered enterprises in the zone has reached 8,102.
 
Meanwhile, the Harbin FTZ signed a framework cooperation agreement on Aug 18 with the Heihe and Suifeihe FTZs in Heilongjiang to expand cooperation in mechanism innovation, regional coordinated development, industrial cooperation, and opening-up.
 
These two FTZs are committed to building the Heilongjiang FTZ into a beacon of opening-up.
 
Additionally, the Harbin FTZ's economic and trade cooperation with Russia has gone trade in goods to trade in services and investment.
 
Statistics showed that in the first six months of this year, the Harbin FTZ saw 2.75 billion yuan ($412.60 million) in imports and exports, accounting for 18.07 percent of Harbin's total foreign, a year-on-year increase of 279.1 percent.
 
Imports and exports to Russia were valued at 294 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 153.4 percent.