Committee Members’ Passage | Tan Haoran: Turning the “Dammed Lake” of Overseas Sales of Used Construction Machinery into a “New Shipping Route”

On the morning of February 2, the Fourth Session of the 13th Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference held the first collective “Committee Members’ Passage” press conference.

As a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) working in the pilot free trade zone, Tan Haoran, a provincial CPPCC member and full-time deputy director of the Office of the China (Hunan) Pilot Free Trade Zone, has consistently offered policy advice to promote Hunan’s open economy. For a long time, he was deeply concerned about the predicament facing the export of used construction machinery from Changsha, Hunan. The “three difficulties”—difficulties in judicial disposal of legal assets, challenges in quality control of remanufactured products, and obstacles in obtaining input tax invoices—had created a massive bottleneck, effectively blocking the industry’s path to international expansion. “Over more than two years, we visited over a dozen cities and industrial parks both at home and abroad, conducted field visits to more than a hundred enterprises, and, drawing on feedback from tax authorities and industry associations, spearheaded the nation’s first reform of the remanufacturing system for construction machinery,” he said.

In 2024, the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference submitted the proposal “Promoting the Export of Remanufactured Construction Machinery to Accelerate the Development of New Momentum for Foreign Trade” to the Two Sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, where it was designated as a key proposal. The proposal has garnered attention and support from multiple national ministries and commissions, including the Central Reform Office and the Ministry of Commerce, thereby facilitating the successive implementation of a series of innovative measures. Over the past two years, remanufactured equipment worth more than RMB 3 billion has been exported from Hunan to markets around the world, transforming what was once a “dammed lake” into a “new shipping lane” for the industry’s global expansion.

Hunan is also “leveraging Hong Kong to go global,” joining forces with Dongfang City in Hainan Province to establish the nation’s first co-built park between a free trade zone and a free trade port—the Hunan–Hainan Advanced Manufacturing Co‑Development Industrial Park. Riding on the momentum of Hainan’s island‑wide customs closure, this park has become another platform for Hunan-based enterprises to expand overseas.

“The story of secondhand construction machinery going global is a microcosm of how the Hunan Pilot Free Trade Zone has leveraged ‘institutional innovation’ to overcome development challenges. Over the past five years, we have accumulated 109 innovative achievements, seven of which have been replicated and promoted nationwide,” Tan Haoran said with pride.