Design and Reform of Hainan’s Offshore Duty-Free Policy

Hainan’s offshore duty-free regime is a distinctive institutional innovation that advances the Hainan Free Trade Port. Through iterative adjustments since 2011, it has delivered early gains in tourism-led consumption while revealing bottlenecks in traveller-to-purchaser conversion and regulatory capacity. This commentary distils the policy’s unique features, diagnoses stage-specific frictions and proposes targeted supervision reforms – risk-based sectional control, enterprise credit governance and digital modernisation – to align openness with enforceability.