The China (Tianjin) Pilot Free Trade Zone, set up in April 2015, connects the Bohai Economic Rim and the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Tianjin has a long history of manufacturing industry. The airport economic area of the Tianjin FTZ, which has been focusing on boosting value-added manufacturing, had generated 18.25 billion yuan ($2.66 billion) in the aerospace industry in the first half of 2016 with an increase of 13.6 percent year-on-year.

"As an international airplane maintainer, our sales rose by 20 percent thanks to the policy reforms that allowed us to bring extra parts out of the country without paying the extra tax as we used to," said Liu Jie, general manager of Goodrich Aerostructures Service (China) Co Ltd, a subsidiary of UTC Aerospace Systems.