A document issued by Hainan's provincial ocean and fisheries regulators on Wednesday details the materials that have to be submitted in order to be granted approval for a development. These include a development plan and a feasibility study report. The submission has to detail the project's potential environmental impacts, and specify how the developers plan to minimize these impacts.

Construction projects, such as ports and shipyards, can apply for leases of up to 50 years, while low-impact uses such as farming can be granted leases as short as 15 years.