Further facilitating the circulation of key market factors and advancing institutional opening-up is crucial to Shanghai, which has served as the country's major window to the world for years, experts said.
They made the comments on Friday, when the Annual Report on the Development of Shanghai Opening-up was released as part of the 9th China International Import Expo, held in the city from Nov 5-10.
The city's greater importance attached to the circulation of key market factors can be mirrored by its rising exports of artificial intelligence tokens. Shanghai also accounts for more than half of the country's data broadband exports, according to the report released for the first time this year.
Shanghai Mayor Zhu Zhongming said during a city promotion conference on Friday that token exports will be a major development focus in the Lin-gang Special Area over the next few years.
These achievements can be largely attributed to Shanghai's multitudinous infrastructure facilities, such as the international data hub in Lin-gang, the international board of the data exchange that includes 30-plus data merchants and nearly 200 data products for trading, as well as the nationally integrated intelligent computing scheduling platform, said the report.
To further facilitate the circulation of key factors, Shanghai can explore introducing a "regulatory sandbox" — a setup wherein firms wanting to test new products operate in the market with real consumers — covering data flows and set up comprehensive pilot programs for international data experiments, said Xu Zhanchen, head of the world economy research department at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
Serving as China's first stop for foreign investment for years, Shanghai has diverted its focus from attracting investment to stabilizing foreign capital throughout their entire life cycle in the city. Against the backdrop of shrinking global capital, intensifying geopolitical competition, and rising domestic and international competition for investment, Shanghai should — for security considerations — optimize the mechanisms for data flows. The city should also comprehensively grant market entry and business operating permits to foreign companies, said Xu, who is also editor-in-chief of the report.
Shanghai's continued industrial transformation has bred new demand and opportunities for foreign investors who are interested in the city. The complete industrial system in the Yangtze River Delta region, which Shanghai is a core part of, will further enhance the city's appeal to foreign capital, especially in frontier industries such as electronic information, biomedicine, AI, new energy vehicles, high-end equipment and advanced materials, the report said.
"Opening-up must be grounded in industries. The overall efficiency of elevated opening-up should by no means be a matter of self-assertion. It should be measured on a global perspective by including today's global North-South relations, South-South relations, global innovative development progress, global governance reform, and, in particular, the contemporary technology revolution best represented by AI. Shanghai should plan for its next opening-up steps by understanding the whole picture, instead of solely focusing on trade," said Xu.
While Shanghai already ranked first among cities worldwide in terms of the flow of goods, it should direct its focus to trade in services such as finance, shipping and professional services, which will help the city have more say in the financial sector, said Zhang Juan, deputy director at the Shanghai Institute of Open Economy.
