Business Environment

Geographical Advantages
Sanya is located at the southern end of Hainan Island and is an important part of China's foreign trade at its southern borders as well as being the political, economic and cultural center in southern Hainan. Sanya is known as "the Oriental Hawaii" and "Sunshine City" because of its tropical scenery. Sanya has unique geographical advantages enabling people to go eastward past the Philippines to get to the Pacific Ocean, southward to Australia and southwestward to the Indo-China Peninsula.

Environmental Protection
Sanya emerges at the edge of a tropical rainforest and has a 65 percent forest coverage ratioin built-up areas, with 121 thousand hectares of forestland and 62 thousand hectares of forested hillsides. There are 10 national, provincial and municipal level nature preserves covering an area of over 12,300 hectares. Average public green-space is 18.9 square meters in the urban areas and the air quality and environment in Sanya ranks first in China. According to a United Nations air quality appraisal of over 148 cities in 45 countries around the world from 1998 to 2003, Sanya ranked second. Furthermore, the average life-span of Sanya people is 73.5 years; the highest in China.

Banking and Insurance
By the end of 2006, there were no foreign-invested banks in Sanya, but all of the big commercial banks from the mainland including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Agricultural Bank, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications, China Ever-Bright Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China, Hainan Development Bank and the China Investment Bank had branches in the city. Insurance companies operating in Sanya include the China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co. Ltd., the Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, the PICC Property and Casualty Company Limited and the China Life Insurance Company. Total premium revenues in Sanya reached 142.83 million RMB, of which premiums for property insurance companies was 38.95 million RMB, life insurance was 93.49 million RMB and health and unforeseen accident insurance totaled 10.39 million RMB. Indemnity and compensation payouts totaled just over 35 million RMB.

Government Efficiency
The Sanya Municipal Government is actively developing e-governance systems and initiating pilot programs to improve its efficiency. Through information technology and networking, the administrative examination and approval departments of the city government are enhancing speed, transparency and functionality in regard to application procedures. "One-stop" examination and approval is the core of the Sanya Municipal Government's policy for foreign investment.

In order to boost efficiency in the agriculture sector, the government has set up an agricultural technology service (Tel: 963110), providing 24/7 service without interruption in order to promptly solve production or technical problems.