Haikou, October 2026—Ten months after its first order, SonoScape’s Hainan maintenance facility has been fully fitted out and equipped, and is now officially in operation. Inside the roughly 1,500-square-meter workshop, components for ultrasound and endoscope devices shipped back from overseas await inspection and repair. They are the second and third batches to arrive since that first order, firmly establishing regular operations in the company's "both-ends-abroad" maintenance channel.

On December 18, 2025, the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP) launched island-wide special customs operations. That same day, a shipment of endoscope parts from overseas, valued at US$49,000, arrived at Haikou Meilan International Airport, cleared Yecheng Customs under Haikou Customs, and was delivered to Haiping International· Haikou High-Tech Zone Medical Device Industrial Park where SonoScape Medical (Haikou) Co., Ltd.'s maintenance facility is located. It was the FTP's first medical-device maintenance shipment under the "both-ends-abroad" model.

In maintenance, "both-ends-abroad" means equipment arrives from overseas, is repaired in Hainan under bond, and is re-exported without entering domestic circulation. For high-value, tightly regulated products such as medical devices, this channel means that equipment Chinese companies sell around the world can finally come home for repairs when it breaks down.

Bonded maintenance has actually been practiced in China’s comprehensive bonded zones for years, but medical devices were long excluded. In July 2025, the Ministry of Commerce released the List of Goods and Articles Prohibited and Restricted from Import and Export in the Hainan Free Trade Port. An annex titled “exception measures for goods imports” allows goods under 38 HS codes—including color ultrasound diagnostic equipment and parts and accessories of endoscopes—to undergo “both-ends-abroad” bonded maintenance in the Hainan FTP, the most open arrangement of its kind in the country. After island-wide special customs operations began, bonded maintenance expanded from specific comprehensive bonded zones to the whole island, allowing companies to carry out this work at their own facilities.

Founded in 2002, SonoScape develops, manufactures, and sells medical devices such as ultrasound diagnostic systems and endoscopes to more than 170 countries and regions. Li Xiaoxi, Director of the company's Customer Service Center, also serves as General Manager of SonoScape Medical (Haikou) Co., Ltd. Overseas service outlets, he explained, operate at a relatively low level of repair capability: they can handle only basic repairs, and assembly-level work often fails to pinpoint the exact fault. At the time, no policy allowed faulty units back into China, so deeper analysis was out of the question. Repair, moreover, is not like manufacturing—every returned unit fails in a different way. In some respects, running such an operation is even more complex than setting up a small factory overseas.

The first order came together through the joint efforts of the Hainan Provincial Department of Commerce, Department of Industry and Information Technology, customs authorities, the Haikou National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, and Haiping International · Haikou High-Tech Zone Medical Device Industrial Park, among others. Supervising such work outside a comprehensive bonded zone, positioning surveillance cameras, setting up the dedicated customs line, and connecting the company’s system with the local customs office all had to be worked out. "We couldn't breathe a sigh of relief until that first order ran through the whole process," Li said. On the day, the shipment arrived at Meilan airport in the morning, and by noon the truck had reached the company’s facility. Clearance that used to be counted in days can now be counted in hours in the FTP.

The value of medical device maintenance, Li noted, goes far beyond the repair itself. Once equipment enters the facility in China, the system logs its logistics information, fault symptoms, and quality-inspection results in dedicated fields. Technical and analysis staff regularly aggregate, compare, and categorize the data, then feed it back through regular meetings to the quality and R&D departments, informing the next round of product development and improvement.

A core reason the Hainan center is positioned as the company’s global repair hub is its aim to concentrate higher-level repair capabilities in the province. Take the ultrasonic endoscope, a product combining ultrasound and endoscopy that SonoScape has developed and manufactures entirely on its own: an ultrasound transducer, sensors, and a series of channels are fitted into a diameter of just over one centimeter, and its more than 100 signal wires are each as thin as a human hair. Overseas outlets, limited by equipment, spare parts, and staff experience, cannot hope to repair such equipment within a reasonable timeframe. In Hainan, with specialized equipment, ample parts, and highly skilled repair personnel, engineers from the Shenzhen headquarters can diagnose and directly repair even the most complex problems. Hainan’s visa-free entry policy, the most open in the country, also makes travel easier for overseas partners and technical personnel, giving the center what it takes to become a global training center. “We want to build it into a training center, where technical certification and capability training can be carried out,” Li said.

Why Hainan? Li has done the math: compared with building a similar high-level repair site overseas, the combined cost of building and operating one in Hainan is expected to be 30 to 40 percent lower over the long term. Labor costs, the preferential 15% rates for both corporate and personal income tax, and logistics costs to nearby markets such as Southeast Asia are all variables that favor the island province.

Longer-term plans are already clear. Li expects repair volume at the Haikou base to grow to about five times the current level over the next year. In his plan, Hainan will handle at least 20 percent of SonoScape’s global maintenance work, build the highest level of repair capability—down to individual components—and continuously transfer and replicate those capabilities to overseas outlets. The company is also applying to bring ultrasound console products under the bonded maintenance scope as it seeks to expand its repair categories. "As a global service center, Hainan can serve as the foundation and the backstop for our global maintenance work—in terms of equipment, spare-parts supply, and staff experience and technical capability. That is the goal we are building toward," he said.