Abstract: Abstract: The FTZ program has become vital to economic policy goals of boosting exports, attracting foreign investment, and creating well-paying and sustainable private jobs. As an important national strategy for entirely promoting the reform and open process in China, there have been major pilot projects in Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, Fujian to be the experimental free trade zones. The study is aiming to enlighten our existing practice of free trade zones by using experience of America. Firstly，the paper reviews the relative concepts and nature of free trade zones and studies three hard-core factors of wisely making locational decision about free trade zones. Then it analyses characteristics of the free trade zones development in America, focusing on their location categories, industrial choices and regulatory modes. The three main findings include: (1) strategic location categories covering airports, harbors and hubs of land-transport;（2）an effective regulatory mode consisting of general purpose zones and subzones, two-level administrative institution and matrix connection system；（3）basic features manifesting large numbers, widely distribution, and various industries.