Foreign journalists visit the Imperial College in Beijing on Tuesday. [Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily]

On the final day of the city tour, journalists visited the Beijing Tianzhu Free Trade Zone and two major areas in it - the National Base for International Cultural Trade (Beijing) and the Cross-border E-commerce Direct Mail Station of Beijing Capital International Airport.

The Beijing Tianzhu Free Trade Zone is the city's only special customs supervision zone and China's first airport comprehensive bonded zone connecting with Beijing Capital International Airport, which provides quick and direct access to imports and exports.

The free trade zone provides duty-free foreign goods, tax refunds and tax exemptions for companies.

For example, it is implementing the value-added tax "exemption, offset and refund" policy for aero engine maintenance. The policy can avoid double tax payments worth about 3.1 million yuan ($461,370) for maintenance of an engine and reduce about 200,000 yuan in logistics cost and around 15 days in logistics time, local officials said.

The National Base for International Cultural Trade (Beijing) was created to advance the Belt and Road Initiative and Beijing's goal to become a national cultural center, they said.

"It is providing services in such areas as exhibition and experience, communication and promotion, transaction settlement, startup incubation and cultivation, financing and investment, and warehousing and logistics," they noted.

There are three marketing centers in operation and more than 20 companies settled at a cross-border e-commerce industrial park within the FTZ. Several commodity halls for Germany, Australia, Argentina, the United States and other countries also can be seen in the FTZ.

By building such cultural exchange platforms, Beijing can play an important role in promoting China's cultural product and service exports and fostering cultural businesses and professionals, local officials said.