HAIKOU, China, May 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from China Daily:
The afternoon sun slants through the tinted glass walls of a livestreaming base in Chengmai county, Hainan province, casting a golden light on the busy venue.
Behind one soundproof door, a young woman from Morocco adjusts a ring light; behind another, a Ghanaian man flashes a wide smile at his camera. In less than a minute, they will begin speaking to thousands of shoppers thousands of miles away — in places like New York, Casablanca, Lagos and Jakarta.
After the island-wide special customs operations came into effect in December at the Hainan Free Trade Port, a different kind of tide is rolling in — not of tourists, but of foreign faces speaking into phones, selling "Made in China" to the world.
"What makes me come to Hainan? It's growing. It's a good opportunity. I feel like I'm going to grow together with this island," said Imane, a 25-year-old from Morocco, taking a short break from her setup.
"Before, it was so difficult because people didn't trust Chinese products," she said. "But when we start explaining — the story of how it comes, we talk about the quality, how it's going to help your daily life — then they start understanding."
"It's the trust. But once you show them the story behind the product — how it's made, who makes it and what problem it solves — they become your loyal customers."
That trust-building is exactly why Hainan's cross-border e-commerce players are doubling down on foreign hosts. Xu Jie, co-founder of Hainan Chuangchen Overseas Enterprise Services, runs a livestreaming base in Chengmai that now employs hosts from nine countries — Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Congo and beyond.
The Hainan Free Trade Port has rolled out a suite of measures that directly benefit cross-border e-commerce. For foreign talents, the process has been streamlined. Hainan now offers a joint work permit and residence permit application that takes just three working days — a reduction of more than 70 percent compared with traditional procedures. Work permits, once issued for three or six months, are now routinely valid for a year.
Even more attractive are the cost advantages brought by the customs policies. Xu calculated that with individual income tax capped at 15 percent for high-end talents — and corporate income tax at 15 percent for encouraged industries — the total operating costs are 15 to 20 percent lower than in the Chinese mainland.
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