Containers pile up in the bustling Yangshan Free Trade Zone. [Photo/WeChat ID: shlgguanweihui]

The Yangshan Free Trade Zone – located in Shanghai's Lin-gang Special Area – jumped to sixth in the list of the best special supervision areas in the country in 2022, recently released by the General Administration of Customs.

That achievement added to Shanghai's Yangshan Port in East China ranking first among the 348 container ports in the world in terms of operational efficiency, according to the Global Container Port Performance Index released by the World Bank earlier this year.

Since it was founded in 2020, the zone has continuously striven to implement institutional innovation, foster new forms of business and new growth drivers – and has achieved a steady increase in economic scale.

Yangshan Port is now available to over 200 major ports around the world. That's paved the way for the industrial scale of the ship supply business there – involving ship spare parts and fuel replenishment, among others – to exceed 1 trillion yuan ($141.6 billion) each year.

To promote its international shipping services, the zone determined to develop in a green and low-carbon way by expanding its refueling capacity for new fuels such as liquefied natural gas, or LNG and green methanol.

By November of this year, the zone had provided bonded LNG refueling services for 65 international ships and the accumulative refueling amount had reached 360,000 cubic meters. 

The zone also set up several functional platforms, such as the public service platform for bonded ships which can provide one-stop services like ship management and trade. By November, the number of registered ships handled by Yangshan Port in the current year ranked first among all the free trade ports and zones in China.