HAIKOU -- China has decided to support Hainan in developing the whole island into a pilot free trade zone, and gradually exploring and steadily promoting the establishment of a free trade port with Chinese characteristics.

Chinese President Xi Jinping made the announcement when delivering a speech at a gathering to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the founding of Hainan Province and the Hainan Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Friday afternoon.

Hainan will be China's largest free trade zone enjoying increased opening-up policies and will be the country's first free trade port since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

"As an isolated island, Hainan can only develop and catch up with the pace of the country's growth with the world's highest degree of opening-up," said Chi Fulin, head of the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development.

Chi, 67, a former official who left Beijing for Hainan in October 1987, was among 100,000 employees across the country to find opportunity and fortune in the burgeoning province in the late 1980s.

Once remote and underdeveloped, Hainan has become one of China's most open and dynamic regions and a top tourist destination.

Xi's speech highlighted Hainan's special advantages -- including its status as China's biggest SEZ, its unique geographic location and the best ecological environment in the country, as reasons to make it a test ground for reform and opening up.

Xi urged the province to give priority to opening-up, implement a more proactive opening-up strategy, speed up the establishment of new institutions of an open economy, and make new ground in pursuing opening-up.

Exchanges in international energy, shipping, commodities and carbon trading will be established in Hainan. The island will also focus on developing modern service industries such as tourism, the Internet, healthcare, finance and hosting conferences and exhibitions.

Qian Jiannong, senior vice president of Fosun International Limited, investor of the first Atlantis resort in China, has high hopes of Hainan's future.

"Hainan is the only tropical island province in China. The era of sightseeing is past and the era of leisure and resort is coming," said Qian. The 540,000 square-meters Atlantis resort, with an investment of 11 billion yuan (about $1.75 billion), is expected to open by the end of this month in Sanya, the most famous resort city in Hainan.