100 Yuan 20th Anniv of Hainan Special Economic Zone

Hainan was designated China's largest Special Economic Zone in April 1988 — not carved from existing industrial infrastructure like Shenzhen, but built around an entire province, the only case where a complete provincial administration was converted wholesale into an SEZ. The experiment was turbulent; a scandal in 1985, before formal SEZ status, saw the island import hundreds of thousands of foreign vehicles duty-free and resell them on the mainland, a scheme so brazen it triggered a national investigation and the dismissal of senior officials.

By the 20th anniversary, Hainan had repositioned itself around tourism and pharmaceutical manufacturing rather than the manufacturing export model that defined its sister SEZs.