Convention embraces city's further expansion of opening-up

The annual Shanghai City Promotion Convention was held on Sunday, supporting the China International Import Expo.

With the theme "Embracing the CIIE, sharing a future," the event sends a warm invitation to global enterprises and talented staff, showing Shanghai stands firm in expanding opening-up.

In the new era, Shanghai's mission and duty is to speed up building a modern socialist cosmopolitan metropolis with global influence, the city's Party Secretary Chen Jining said at the convention.

Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng, meanwhile, introduced the city's recent progress on this path, pledging to strive to provide the best environment and optimal services to create more market opportunities, investment opportunities and development opportunities.

"Shanghai will put forth efforts to build a high-standard market system, stimulate the vitality of market players, create a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized world-class business environment," Gong said.

More measures on investment and trade facilitation and liberalization will be launched, together with more high-capacity platforms for two-way opening-up.

The city is also to promote key core technologies, establish world-class innovation clusters, and gather more talented staff, according to Gong.

Newly revised measures were launched on encouraging multinational enterprises to set up their regional headquarters in Shanghai.

Also at the event, agreements were signed for 18 key projects, with a combined investment of approximately 30 billion yuan (US$4.17 billion).

The projects are to be landed in various districts across the city, especially the Lingang Special Area and Hongqiao International Central Business District, covering key industries such as bio-medicine, integrated circuit, artificial intelligence, high-end equipment, and lives and health.