On September 9, media outlets including Laos' Pasaxon (People's Newspaper) and Sri Lanka's Lankapuvath (Sri Lanka National News Agency) turned their focus to the opening-up practices of the China (Yunnan) Pilot Free Trade Zone Kunming Area in the seven years since its inauguration. The reports note that, as a key frontier of China's opening-up to South and Southeast Asia, the Kunming Area has drawn on its geographic advantages as a border region and on cross-border transport corridors such as the China-Laos Railway to steadily advance institutional innovation. These efforts have driven coordinated improvements in the business environment, industrial development and international cooperation, showcasing distinctive border-area features as the Area expands high-standard opening-up.

The reports focused on the Area's explorations in tackling the challenges of border-area opening-up through institutional innovation. Over the past seven years, the Area has registered a total of 228 institutional innovation outcomes, 16 of them national firsts, and has completed all 94 pilot reform tasks assigned by the State Council. Cross-regional government services, international commercial legal services and the development of cross-border logistics standards have continued to improve, facilitating cross-regional business operations and international trade. Meanwhile, cross-border logistics corridors such as the China-Laos Railway have further strengthened Kunming's economic and trade links with South and Southeast Asia, accelerating the integration of logistics, trade and industry. The reports show that, as the strengths of open corridors and institutional innovation continue to compound, the Kunming Area is further fulfilling its role as a hub linking China with South and Southeast Asia, opening up new space for regional economic and trade cooperation.

Sri Lanka's Lankapuvath (Sri Lanka National News Agency) website screenshot

Laos' Pasaxon (People's Newspaper)  website screenshot

The full text of the report is as follows:

Golden Corridors Power New Growth as Institutional Innovation Surges — Kunming Area of Yunnan Pilot Free Trade Zone ‌Takes the Lead in Border Opening-Up

On August 30, 2026, the Kunming Area of the China (Yunnan) Pilot Free Trade Zone (hereinafter referred to as the “Kunming Area”) marked the seventh anniversary of its official establishment.

Seven years ago, this open experimental zone, rooted in southwest China and bordering South and Southeast Asia, was officially inaugurated. Over the past seven years, the China-Laos Railway has entered operation and cross-border logistics corridors have become increasingly efficient. The Kunming Area has gradually evolved from the “far end” of China’s opening-up to a position on the “front line,” leveraging its connectivity advantages to turn its geographic location into a driving force for development. Four key areas—institutional innovation, business services, industrial development and international cooperation—have advanced in tandem. A series of pioneering reforms have been implemented with tangible results, the real economy has continued to expand, and cross-border flows have accelerated. In the process, the Kunming Area has gradually forged a distinctive path for the development of a border-area pilot free trade zone with Yunnan characteristics.

Deepening Institutional Innovation to Blaze a New Path for Border Opening-Up

Institutional innovation is the core mission of a pilot free trade zone. Over the past seven years, the Kunming Area has generated a total of 228 institutional innovation outcomes, including 16 that were the first of their kind nationwide. It has also achieved a 100 percent implementation rate for the 94 reform pilot tasks assigned by the State Council. These achievements are not isolated breakthroughs; rather, they represent a systematic effort driven by the practical needs of border-area opening-up—from cross-border settlement and data as a factor of production to industrial relocation and intellectual property. At every step, the reforms have been aimed at addressing the real bottlenecks faced by businesses.

Innovation does not emerge out of thin air; in most cases, it is driven by real problems facing businesses. In the field of data property rights, the Kunming Area worked with Shanghai Lingang Economic Development(Group) Co.,Ltd. to advance the “Digital Cloud Cattle” project, an integrated digital platform for the cattle industry. It became the first in China to establish a complete process linking data rights confirmation, the recognition of data as balance-sheet assets, and intellectual property-backed financing. This led to the country’s first intellectual property pledge financing deal involving an animal-husbandry data product, helping the company secure a credit line of 10 million yuan.

“This mechanism has enabled data to become a genuinely assessable, tradable and financeable asset, solving the longstanding disconnect between traditional animal husbandry and supply-chain finance,” said Dong Jia, a specially appointed senior manager with the Kunming Area’s Department of Institutional Innovation, explaining the significance behind the country’s first such deal.

In digital finance, the Kunming Area has worked with financial institutions to explore new approaches to cross-border settlement. Leveraging the mBridge multilateral central bank digital currency platform, the Yunnan Branch of Bank of China completed China’s first remittance transaction to Dubai under the initiative. It was also Yunnan Province’s first cross-border settlement transaction using the digital yuan involving the United Arab Emirates. The initial pilot transaction amounted to 4.9656 million yuan and enabled point-to-point payments between domestic and overseas banks, significantly reducing foreign-exchange risks and transaction costs. The “Kunming precedent” offers a model that foreign trade enterprises in Yunnan and beyond can draw on when conducting cross-border payments in multiple currencies and markets.

The vitality of institutional innovation lies in its replicability and scalability. China’s first pilot program for an integrated bank settlement account system covering both domestic and foreign currencies has improved the efficiency of cross-border settlements by 30 percent. The registration time for the protection and utilization of data-related intellectual property rights has been cut by 80 percent in China’s first such initiative, while the “new model for the graduated undertaking of industrial relocation” was selected by the Ministry of Commerce as a best-practice case. These breakthroughs, each representing a step from “zero to one,” have come together to form the replicable and scalable “Kunming experience.” The essence of that experience is not innovation for innovation’s sake, but targeted institutional reform that addresses real challenges in border areas, such as inefficient flows of production factors and high market barriers, using institutional flexibility to unlock new room for development.

Improving Business Services to Create a Supportive Environment for Enterprise Growth

Whether businesses are willing to come—and whether they choose to stay—is ultimately determined by the business environment. Since its establishment, the Kunming Area has made improving the business environment its “top priority,” continuously deepening reforms to streamline government functions, delegate powers, strengthen regulation and improve public services. Through a “four-zone coordinated development” mechanism, it has promoted policy coordination and resource sharing. The central aim is to minimize market-entry barriers arising from administrative boundaries and allow businesses to focus their energy on running their operations.

Cross-regional reform of business registration has been one of the area’s most groundbreaking initiatives. In 2024, the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone branch of the Kunming Administration for Market Regulation and the Economic and Technological Development Zone branch of the Kunming Administration for Market Regulation signed a memorandum of cooperation. By 2026, the Kunming Area had become the first in Yunnan Province to achieve full coverage of the “one business license, multiple locations” filing system, completing a transition from a pilot program covering two zones to full implementation across all four zones.

The accompanying “Kunmo Cross-Zone Access” administrative approval model covers 29 matters that can now be handled across administrative boundaries. Companies registered in Mohan but operating with teams based in Kunming no longer need to shuttle between the two locations to complete procedures. According to an official with the Kunming Area’s Comprehensive Service Center, dedicated service staff provide guidance throughout the entire process, replacing the need for businesses to “run around between different offices” with a model in which service personnel handle the process from start to finish.

The upgrading of government services has given businesses another taste of the “Kunming touch.” The Kunming Area has made its “department heads on duty to hear and address complaints” program a regular practice, helping businesses resolve pressing difficulties involving financing, employment and land use. The government service center at the Shanghai-Yunnan Lingang Kunming Science and Technology City follows the principles of “proactive service” and “frontline service,” upgrading government services from merely being “available” to being easier, faster and smarter, thereby bridging the “last mile” in serving businesses.

French entrepreneur Mr. Yannick Benichou has experienced firsthand the steady improvement in Kunming’s business environment.

For companies going global, financing and legal services are two hurdles they cannot avoid. The Kunming Area has introduced an innovative “worry-free credit insurance” program based on a “credit insurance + financing” model, which has supported more than US$300 million in export earnings to date. Its international legal services complex integrates resources for cross-border legal services and has been selected as one of China’s top 100 business-environment cases.

Foreign investors doing business in Kunming have also felt the tangible impact of gradual improvements in the financial environment. “A few years ago, joint ventures like ours could hardly get any loans,” said Mr. Yannick Benichou, a French entrepreneur who has lived in Kunming for 10 years. He said the situation changed significantly around 2020. “Banks began approaching us proactively and offering credit loans to support our business development.” He also successfully obtained a mortgage to purchase a home in Kunming. In his view, “These small changes are very important for retaining talent.”

Promoting Industrial Upgrading to Build a Powerful Engine for High-Quality Development

Industry is the foundation of an industrial zone and ultimately the point at which institutional innovation and the business environment translate into tangible results. Looking back on the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the Kunming Area successfully established two provincial demonstration bases for new industrialization, one focused on equipment manufacturing and the other on biomedicine. Its equipment manufacturing cluster has also been recognized as a provincial advanced equipment manufacturing cluster.

The area now hosts 380 high-tech enterprises, 12 national-level “Little Giant” enterprises specializing in niche markets, advanced technologies and strong innovation capabilities, and 188 provincial-level specialized and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. A modern industrial system led by manufacturing and supported by coordinated development of the secondary and tertiary sectors is now taking shape.

Workers monitor equipment operation in the intelligent production workshop of Yunbian Electric.

More compelling than the figures themselves are the stories of established companies putting out new growth. Yunnan Transformer Electric Co., Ltd., which has more than 90 years of history, has built China’s highest-altitude 500-kilovolt transformer shielding test hall, filling a gap in ultra-high-voltage manufacturing on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Its railway traction transformer products have maintained the country’s largest market share and have been supplied for major national projects including the China-Laos Railway, the Beijing-Xiongan Intercity Railway and the Chongqing-Kunming High-Speed Railway.

Yang Lin, director of the company’s marketing center, said the company is accelerating its digital and intelligent transformation. Meanwhile, Xuelan Dairy became the first dairy company in China to receive the Quality Dairy Certification, while Yunnan Xicao Resources won an international innovation award for beauty ingredients for plant cell fluid extracted from coffee fruit skins. Drawing on Yunnan’s distinctive resource advantages, local companies are pursuing differentiated development paths.

At the Xuelan Milk product display area, assorted dairy products are neatly laid out, demonstrating the diverse product portfolio of this home‑grown Yunnan dairy firm.

For industry to expand outward, logistics must keep pace. In 2026, construction began on the Kunming Logistics Distribution Center project, with a total investment of approximately 1.06 billion yuan, in the core Wangjiaying area of the China-Kunming International Land Port. The project will closely connect with cross-border logistics corridors including the China-Laos and China-Vietnam routes, helping address shortcomings in the area’s smart logistics infrastructure.

The project complements the growing capacity of the China-Laos Railway, as a virtuous cycle in which “corridors drive logistics, logistics drives trade, and trade drives industry” gradually takes shape in the Kunming Area.

Expanding International Cooperation to Build a Regional Hub for South and Southeast Asia

If institutional innovation and the business environment are the Kunming Area’s “internal strength,” then openness and international cooperation are its “external strength.” Over the past seven years, the Kunming Area has transformed its geographic advantages into advantages in opening-up, continuously expanding the breadth and depth of its external engagement and strengthening its role as a hub reaching into South and Southeast Asia.

Opening-up is not only about facilitating the flow of goods; it also involves aligning rules and standards. Leveraging its international legal services complex, the Kunming Area coordinates domestic and overseas resources in legal practice, intellectual property, taxation and finance, and customs procedures. It has built a full-chain service system covering cross-border customs declarations, international arbitration, overseas patent strategies and localized compliance, encouraging companies to move from “going it alone” to “going global together while ensuring compliance.”

In 2026, the Kunming Area signed a cooperation agreement with the Yunnan Institute of Standardization and the municipal administration for market regulation, and launched a platform to promote standards-based institutional opening-up. It also released China’s first association standard for cross-border railway logistics services, the *Specification for Cross-Border Logistics Services for China-Laos Railway Container International Freight Trains*, filling a gap in the standardization of cross-border logistics services in the region.

An official with the Yunnan Logistics and Supply Chain Association said that standards provide services with a common “yardstick,” making it possible to evaluate service quality using data and encouraging the industry to improve and upgrade. The shift from “experience-driven” to “standards-driven” development reflects a deeper evolution in the Kunming Area’s pursuit of institutional opening-up.

The opening-up of the area has also attracted growing international attention. The Academy of International Business Officials under the Ministry of Commerce organized a training program for officials from Latin American countries to visit the Kunming Area and hold discussions there. More than 30 officials and business leaders from countries including Spain, Colombia and Costa Rica spoke positively of the international standards of the area’s “one-stop” integrated services.

As the capacity of the China-Laos Railway continues to expand, more and more companies are taking advantage of the “Lancang-Mekong Express,” promoting deeper integration of logistics, trade and industry.

After seven years of determined effort, the Kunming Area has successfully forged a new path for border-area opening-up, guided by institutional innovation, supported by a sound business environment, grounded in industrial development and strengthened through international cooperation.

Its achievements are reflected not only in one “first-of-its-kind” transaction after another and in successive sets of upgraded performance indicators, but also in its deeper integration into national strategies. The Kunming Area has played a strategic supporting role in advancing the building of a China-Laos community with a shared future and in driving regional development across South and Southeast Asia.

As it embarks on a new journey at the seventh anniversary of its establishment, the Kunming Area will remain focused on institutional opening-up, deepen reform and innovation, accelerate efforts to apply for designation as a pilot zone for standards-based institutional opening-up, and continue to develop and share the replicable and scalable “Kunming experience.”

Along these golden corridors, the pace of border-area opening-up is becoming ever more steady; in this experimental zone, the tide of institutional innovation continues to surge. (Kunming Information Hub | Correspondents Wang Zhijie and Hu Shichen)