News and Insights
Commentary on the regulatory and commercial developments shaping capital deployment into the Hainan Free Trade Port.
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Registered Capital Is a Schedule You Have Promised to Meet
Since 2015 foreign exchange registration for direct investment has been done at the bank, not the regulator. That made capital injections faster and made a mismatched contribution schedule harder to hide.
Two Corporate Assets Every Entity Has and Almost Nobody Manages
The registered address and the company chop are the two things that most reliably cause trouble in a foreign-invested entity, and neither usually has a named owner.
Hainan Legislated Against Bad-Faith Trademark Filings. Here Is What It Reaches
The Free Trade Port's intellectual property regulations penalise bad-faith applications, provide for punitive damages and feed a serious-dishonesty list. None of that helps a brand that filed second.
Park Selection in Hainan Decides More Than Rent
Hainan's incentives are not uniform across the island. Several are scoped to particular parks, which makes site selection a policy decision taken early — and an expensive one to revisit.
Two Negative Lists, Two Different Questions, One Market Entry Decision
Screening an activity against the foreign investment negative list tells you whether you may operate in Hainan. It does not tell you whether operating there is worth doing. Those are separate lists and separate answers.
The Legal Representative Role Is a Personal Exposure, Not a Title
The 2023 Company Law revision tightened who can hold the role, how they leave it, and what directors personally owe. Groups still appoint into it as though it were a signature block.
Four Providers, Four Partial Calendars, and the Obligations Between Them
Obligations that belong to no single provider are the ones that get missed. In Hainan several of the most consequential sit precisely in those gaps.
Equity Incentives Meet the Hainan Tax Cap at the Vesting Date
A plan designed in one jurisdiction produces a taxable event in another. For Hainan-based participants the question is whether that event falls inside the capped comprehensive income, and it is decided per event.
Every Major Hainan FTP Tax Relief Now Expires on the Same Day
The corporate income tax reduction, the talent income tax cap and the capital expenditure relief were each extended separately in 2025 — and each now runs to 31 December 2027. That common end date is a planning fact, not a footnote.
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Our practice areas cover the whole life of a foreign-owned presence in Hainan — from the feasibility assessment made before anything is filed, through formation and licensing, payroll, tax and ongoing compliance, to the deregistration that closes an entity properly — alongside the Free Trade Port incentives that are the reason to be here rather than anywhere else in China. One engagement model means a single accountable team across all of them.
