CHINA's cabinet, or State Council, has published a list of Shanghai free-trade zone (FTZ) policies it hopes will be replicated in other Chinese cities to accelerate growth and lift restrictions on foreign investment.
Needed reforms to be replicated include simplifying approvals for overseas investment, easing regulations on cross-border cargo flows, and easing currency conversions and widening the role of market forces.
"The announcement appeared to be a general guideline without detailed measures on how and where to expand the Shanghai policies," said Zhao Xiaolei, head of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics' FTZ research institute.
"It is highly expected a fresh round of efforts to bolster FTZ developments will roll out soon," said Prof Zhao, reports Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.
In late October, President Xi Jinping likened the Shanghai FTZ to "seeds" of economic reforms, while urging policymakers to expand the pilot scheme nationwide.
While cracking down on social liberty, with more control over the Internet and the arrests of free speech advocates and political dissidents, Beijing also appears to be liberalising economic freedoms.
At the end of last year, the State Council approved three new FTZs in Fujian, Tianjin and Guangdong, while endorsing Shanghai's plan to more than quadruple the geographic size of its zone to 120.7 square kilometres.
When the Shanghai FTZ was inaugurated in September 2013, Beijing pledged to make the yuan convertible, but this has yet to occur with businesses expressing discontent at the lack of transparency and clarity of policies.