Research On Free Port:Evolution And Institution

Free port is a traditional trade promotion tool and it is the initial state of global free zone. The formation and development of free port are the necessary stages in the process of globalization and trade liberalization and the result of the changes in international relation system and national economic system. In the process of Chinese reform and opening-up, free port has drawn attention for a long time. Ideas and regulations of free port system have constantly being learned and borrowed to satisfy the need of opening-up and economic growth.The establishment of four pilot free trade zones in China has given rise to a trend in researching free port and free trade zone. After reviewing the studies on free port and its institution, it is found that current studies have described and analyzed the characteristics, operational modes, management methods and economic impacts of free port/zone from various aspects. Although they have strong application value, there are also some limitations, such as:firstly, their general understanding of free zone, which is represented by free port, is quite unclear or even ambiguous or wrong. Secondly, their understanding of the free port institution is too simple and the level of institution study is single. Thirdly, the evolution and developmental trend of free port system have not been understood systematically and dynamically.Based on the above limitations, under the guidance of neo-liberal institutionalism theory, theory of international public goods and non-traditional security theory, this dissertation analyzes the concepts, functions, forms and system evolution of global free zones by combining theories and practice, comparative study and integral analysis, status quo description and historical review. Targeted at free zones represented by free port, this study will start from discriminating the definitions, functions and types of different free zones to illustrate the generational evolution of free port and further propose a "air-sea-land" triple-type classification methods based on the development of ports. The developmental rules of free port will be summarizedso as to have a general understanding of the global free zone. In institutional study, this dissertation gives an analysis of the connotations, attributes and components of free port institution and discriminates the attributes of the free port institution creatively by adopting the international public goods theory. The evolution of free port system is deemed as a general institutional transformation and the factors behind the system evolution are studies under international system. Lastly, this dissertation discusses the spill-over effect of free port institution, analyzing the formative reasons and functional mechanism of spill-over effect from the perspective of international public goods and studying the spill-over characteristics of free port systematic risk from the perspective of non-traditional security theory. The implication of free port spill-over effect on Chinese pilot free trade zone institutional construction is therefore described based on above analysis.