Shanghai ranks high in tech and innovation

In the past decade, Shanghai's total investment in research and development expanded nearly three-fold to 181.98 billion yuan ($25.95 billion), and the city's comprehensive performance in technology and innovation is impressive in world ranking, officials said on Tuesday.

During the ten year period of 2012 and 2021, Shanghai's R&D investment soared from 67.95 billion yuan to 181.98 billion yuan, and its R&D spending intensity, or the expenditure on R&D as a percentage of its gross domestic product, rose from 3.31 percent to 4.21 percent during the same period, said Xu Feng, Party secretary of the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality.

Technology as an endogenous power is driving up the city's high-quality development, making the city one of the major innovative cities across the world. According to the 2021 Global Innovation Index published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, Shanghai was rated eighth among the top 100 global science and technology clusters.

In the past decade, a batch of enterprises engaged in technology innovation are growing at an accelerated pace. As of the end of August, there were 71 Shanghai-based companies that are listed on the China's science-technology innovation board, or the STAR Market, with their combined market capitalization surpassing 1.4 trillion yuan, Xu said.