A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of China’s Free Trade Zones: Status and Evolutionary Trends

The China free trade zone, crucial for advancing a new open economy, has gained significant attention lately. We analyzed 885 papers from Peking University Core and CSSCI journals (2012-2023) using CiteSpace for visualization. Our research results indicate that the literature on China’s free trade zone peaked with 171 articles in 2015, and gradually returned to an average of 45 articles per year. The main research focuses in this field include “institutional innovation”, “negative list”, “financial innovation”, “financial openness”, “opening up to the outside world”, and “economic growth”. In addition, cutting-edge analysis indicates that “dual circulation” and “blockchain” are future research trends. The main authors of the literature include Yang Bin, Zhu Xiaolin, Yuan Bo, Li Meng, Zhao Liang, and others. Their affiliated institutions, research institutes, and universities have not yet formed a clear core circle of authors; The top three research institutions with the highest number of publications are the International Trade and Economic Cooperation Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, Kaiyuan Law School of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the Comprehensive Research Institute of the Free Trade Zone of Sun Yatsen University. This article delves into the current hot topics and progress in the research of China’s free trade zones, providing important references and inspirations for future scholars in this field.