This year’s Lujiazui Forum opened on June 28. Yang Xiong, mayor of Shanghai, made a keynote speech at a keynote session of the forum, according to Eastday.com.

Yang Xiong, mayor of Shanghai, makes a keynote speech at the Lujiazui Forum on June 28.

Shanghai plans to become a financial hub, and Mayor Yang said that market development is essential to this plan.

Yang pointed out that the city should continuously strengthen its ability to serve as an influential financial center.

Yand said that the major financial markets in China, including national markets such as securities, foreign exchanges and future goods, are mainly located in Shanghai. Its adjacency to the market and its market-orientation are unique characteristics that distinguish Shanghai from other financially-geared cities. Such characteristics serve as prominent advantages in building Shanghai into a financial hub.

Shanghai has successfully launched a large number of financial products, such as stock index futures, gold futures and medium-term notes, on the basis of consolidating and enhancing the function of the current financial market in recent years.

The scale of the financial market expanded quickly, and the total amount of financial market transactions reached 528 trillion yuan ($86.27 trillion) in 2012, increasing three times compared with 2007. Shanghai’s stock turnover ranks fourth in the world. Stock value ranks seventh, and the actual transaction volume of gold has maintained a top spot in the world for years.

Yang emphasized that Shanghai will work to strengthen functions and expand the width and depth of financial markets. Market coverage should also be further expanded to strengthen the overall containing ability of the market. The structure of market participants should be further optimized to enrich the market and speed up the strengthening of a multi-level, functional financial market system.