Being included in the free trade zone (FTZ) in Fujian province will further open up the economy and push for reforms in the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, experts said.

The decision to establish an FTZ in Fujian was announced during a regular meeting of the National People's Congress on Dec 26. It will be composed of three parts – in Fuzhou (31.26 sq km), Xiamen (43.78 sq km) and Pingtan (43 sq km).

The FTZ in Pingtan will focus on three sectors – high-tech, port economy and leisure tourism, authorities said.

The making of the function clearly maps out blueprints for Pingtan, which has been transformed from an outlying island city with less than 70 million yuan ($11 million) in its financial revenue in 2004 to a hot location that saw a 30 billion yuan investment on gross fixed-assets, according to an insider with the local government.

“Pingtan is an ideal experimental area for a number of preferential policies, given its proximity to Taiwan,” said Huang Maoxing, deputy dean of the school of economics at Fujian Normal University.

“In the long run, the most important chip of Pingtan is the promotion of cross-Straits ties and trades. The tax policies and relaxed investment policies will create much convenience for Taiwanese entrepreneurs,” he said.

The future of the FTZ in Pingtan will depend on trade facilitation, liberalization of investment and financial globalization, according to Tu Xiaojin, an economics expert with Fuzhou University.

“The overseas investors will have a wider range of investment options in Pingtan. In addition, the free exchange of RMB and the establishment of an offshore financial center will link Pingtan’s economy to the global market,” he said.

The official inauguration of the FTZ, which is due by March, also excited many Taiwanese businessmen who are bullish about the future.

“The release of those policies, innovation on mechanisms, the relaxed restrictions on investment items and the incentives at the duty-free Taiwanese Commodity Market are all good news to us. We are looking forward to bringing in more high-quality products from Taiwan to Pingtan and more areas on the Chinese mainland,” said Xue Deqing, a Taiwanese entrepreneur who has been in Pingtan for 17 years.

As the specific policies are implemented, more Taiwanese people will come to Pingtan for business, he added.

Official figures showed that 287 Taiwanese enterprises had registered in Pingtan as of Nov 2014.