Graphics: GT

China will set up three new free trade zones (FTZ) in Guangdong, Tianjin and Fujian, the State Council announced Friday, underlining the government's resolve to speed up reforms and tap new potential amid a protracted economic slowdown that has sparked calls for more aggressive stimulus.

Specific areas in South China's Guangdong Province, North China's Tianjin and East China's Fujian Province will be designated as the new free trade zones, modeled on the Shanghai free trade zone launched last year, according to a statement released after a State Council meeting on Friday.

The three new zones will introduce new experiments based on local characteristics, the statement said, without elaborating.

"The decision means an extension of the pilot program aimed to open China wider to the world, since the three new zones have different focuses and positioning from the existing Shanghai free trade zone," Bai Ming, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times Friday.

According to Bai, the Tianjin FTZ will facilitate trade with Japan and South Korea and also serves as an open window for the development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional block, the Guangdong FTZ will focus on promoting financial services and trade with Hong Kong and Macao and Fujian on boosting economic and trade links with the island of Taiwan.

"But I'm a little surprised that no new FTZ in the western region was announced today. Maybe competition among western cities such as Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi'an is too fierce to decide," Bai said.

The China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone was launched in September 2013 and was seen as a testing ground for financial reforms, commodities trading and logistics.

Shanghai adopted a "negative list" approach for foreign investment in its free trade zone, which ensures foreign companies can invest without any restriction if a sector is not on the list of sensitive areas.

Friday's statement also said China would further shorten the negative list for foreign investment in Shanghai free trade zone. In July, the Shanghai municipal government cut the number of bans and restrictions on foreign investment in the FTZ to 139 items from the previous 190 items.

This echoed the decision made at the just-concluded annual economic meeting that China will optimize the investment environment, spread the experiences of the Shanghai free trade zone and stabilize and improve the quality of foreign investment.

Friday's announcement came after China released November economic data that showed fresh signs of weakness in the economy, putting pressure on the government to rebalance the economy and focus on reform. 

The industrial output grew 7.2 percent in November from a year ago, slowing from October's 7.7 percent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Friday. It was the weakest pace since August, missing the market expectation of 7.5 percent.

Fixed-asset investment rose 15.8 percent in the January-November period from a year earlier, down from 15.9 percent in the first 10 months and the slowest pace in almost 13 years, the data showed.

"Policymakers appear to be taking a relatively sanguine view about this recent weakness," Julian Evans-Pritchard, a China economist at Capital Economics, a London-based economic consultancy, said in a research note e-mailed to the Global Times Friday, noting the government placed the emphasis on quality of growth at the just-concluded annual economic work conference.

Friday's decision and data came after the conclusion of a key annual economic meeting where China's leadership called for the need to adapt to the economy's "new normal" of lower speed but more sustainable growth.

China's economy has resilience and potential and the government has sufficient room to maneuver as the economy slows, and the nation should rely on reforms and restructuring to boost the economy and strive to achieve higher quality and good momentum of economic growth, said the statement released after the Central Economic Work Conference Thursday. 

"The message delivered from the central economic work meeting showed the government will allow structural slowdown in investment in sectors with overcapacity and speed up reforms to create new growth engines," Wang Jun, an economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing-based think tank, told the Global Times Friday.

"China should not squander the opportunity of the current economic slowdown and should use the reforms to unleash the growth potentials. The new announcement of three free trade zones is a reflection of the leadership's resolve on reforms," Bai said.