Early in the morning, at the port of Haikou, giant cranes unload containers from Southeast Asia while trucks leave the docks heading to the new industrial parks built around the capital of Hainan. At first glance, it could be just another of the many ports along the coast of this island south of the world's factory. But something exceptional is happening here by Chinese standards: many of these goods have entered without paying tariffs. And some may later jump from this tropical province to the gigantic mainland market enjoying tax advantages as well.
We are at the heart of the Hainan Free Trade Port, the world's largest by area. It is not a port in the traditional sense. It is an entire island, a territory of dimensions similar to Belgium turned into a huge free trade zone. It is the most ambitious economic experiment that Beijing has launched since those special economic zones that the reformist leader Deng Xiaoping used over four decades ago to open the first capitalist cracks in communist China.
The Asian superpower is transforming this former pirate island into a platform for trade, finance, technology, and tourism. A kind of Chinese hybrid that aims to compete with Hong Kong, Singapore, or Dubai. And in Europe, Spain has been the first country to knock on this promising door.
During the summer of 2025, the governor of Hainan, Liu Xiaoming, was on an official visit to Madrid when the former socialist leader Antonio Miguel Carmona, now an entrepreneur and professor at the University of Beijing, received a call from the Chinese ambassador, Jao Ying. He asked for help to gather, with just a couple of hours' notice, representatives of some of the main companies listed on the Ibex. Carmona managed to mobilize several businessmen, and on that same day, a meeting was held with the governor at the Chinese Embassy. At the end, Liu made a proposal: to help bring Spanish investment to Hainan.
Months later, Carmona met again with the governor, this time on the Chinese island and accompanied by the lawyer Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio and the financier Ángel Fernández-Pola. From those conversations emerged a plan to create, with the support of provincial authorities, an office that would act as an intermediary between the Spanish business fabric and the new Free Trade Port. Carmona's team was thus the first in Europe to set up a structure of this kind on the island, with the aim of facilitating both the arrival of investments and the commercialization of Spanish products.
"The main motivation for setting up an office in Hainan was the imbalance in Spain's trade balance with China," explains Carmona to EL MUNDO. "From there, and at the request of the governor of Hainan, they proposed setting up a commercial office. Taking advantage of the free trade project, we need to introduce investors and Spanish products to help reduce the trade deficit and try to offset that imbalance."
Since its inception, according to the data managed by Carmona, the office has signed agreements with 32 Spanish companies, some interested in investing directly in Hainan and others in using the island as a platform to market their products in China. "With about 63% of these companies, we have been very successful," says the businessman. "What they are demanding the most are tourism companies." A sector that fits precisely with one of the pillars on which Beijing wants to build the new economic model of the territory: a gateway for foreign goods and capital, but also the major holiday and consumption destination in southern China and other neighboring Asian countries.
The Spanish entry into the island has also been influenced by Joan Gaspart, former president of FC Barcelona, appointed by local authorities as the "global ambassador of Hainan." And there is a third man, much more political, who is recurrently linked to this place: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The former Prime Minister has been traveling to Hainan for years, participating in the Boao Forum, the major political and economic event known as the Asian Davos, and meeting with high-ranking officials of the Communist Party of the province.
Hainan has thus become one of those discreet scenarios where some of the most important political and business contacts between Spain and China have been woven. The qualitative leap in relations came in December 2025 when the island began operating under a separate customs regime from the rest of China. In the first five and a half months of the new system, imports subject to zero tariffs reached nearly 2.65 billion yuan - about 318 million euros - a year-on-year increase of 120%.
But to better understand the scope of the new Chinese experiment, one must leave Haikou and travel about 300 kilometers south to Sanya, the tourist capital. Paradise beaches, luxury resorts, golf courses, and marinas full of yachts. Here, Beijing is not only seeking to attract foreign capital. It also aims to prevent its own capital from leaving.
"We have tropical marine resources and favorable weather all year round," emphasizes Shi Lei, director of the International Exchange Department of the Sanya Tourism Development Office. "The strategy is to ensure that those who come seeking sun and sea find enough reasons to stay longer and, above all, spend more," he adds.
In the Haitang Bay area stands one of the great temples of this strategy: the Sanya International Duty Free Shopping Complex. A gigantic complex that brings together more than a thousand international brands and a duty-free offer. The corridors are lined with showcases of jewelry, watches, cosmetics, and international brands while groups of Chinese tourists move forward loaded with bags.
Since its opening, Lei explains, more than 70 million visitors have visited a space that combines shops, restaurants, entertainment, and cultural activities. "Since the new policy of duty-free shopping began to be implemented until the end of April 2026, almost three million visitors bought 17.45 million items. Spending increased by 22.6% compared to the same period the previous year," he assures.
Local officials insist that the big bet now is to attract corporate headquarters, funds, insurers, technology companies, and businesses linked to international trade. For many companies, there is a reduced corporate tax rate of 15%. With this, China seeks to demonstrate that, despite the trade war with the United States, technological restrictions, and the doubts that its economy has raised among foreign investors, it can still open new windows to international capital.
Hainan now serves Beijing as a showcase of openness when foreign investment has been showing signs of weakness for years. But it also functions as a controlled experiment: China can try out measures here that would be much riskier if applied suddenly nationwide. A communist island playing the role of a free port. A Chinese territory separated from the rest of the provinces by a customs border. A gigantic laboratory where Beijing seeks to attract foreign capital, recover consumption that was escaping abroad, and test how far it can open its economy without losing control over it.
Four decades ago, that experiment was called Shenzhen and was little more than a border city facing Hong Kong. It ended up becoming one of the great technological engines of the planet. Now China is once again trying a large-scale opening, this time on a tropical island of 35,000 square kilometers. And while Beijing tries to replicate part of that economic miracle, Spain has already made its move to not be left out.