One-stop window for green demonstration zone

Shanghai and neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are to accelerate the building of a one-stop service window for helping with foreigners' work and residence in the demonstration zone of green and integrated ecological development in the Yangtze River Delta.

According to Ma Chunlei, director of the zone's executive committee, the restrictions for foreign high-tech talent will be loosened and it could be expected they will have stable work permits in this area in the future.

"At the demonstration zone, we promote a joint mode of issuing work permit and residence permit for foreigners at the same time and facilitate the establishment of one-stop service window in Shanghai's Qingpu, Suzhou's Wujiang and Jiaxing's Jiashan so that it can be easier for their employers to help them apply for the documents," said Lu Min, chief engineer at the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission. "We will also work on setting up a system which can allow the work permit of high-level foreign talent to be recognized in different areas."

Meanwhile, the construction and sharing of access to public services of the city and two provinces in this area will also be speeded up.

For coordinated development in education, it will strive to have high-level universities to set up branches, union university or research institutes in the demonstration zone.

Demonstration areas for industry and education integration will be established and it will explore new modes for connecting vocational schools and high schools or colleges.

The allocation of medical resources and the integration of medical insurance will also be the focus. Provincial or city-level hospitals are encouraged to have branches or special departments in the demonstration zone and patients can see a doctor at any hospitals in this area with the same method of medical fee payment.

Cooperation in culture, tourism and sports industries will be launched as well to raise the quality and influence of their products.

The allocation of public resources will be improved. It will also push forward the sharing of information in public resource transaction platforms and resource integration.

The works on information infrastructure will also be accelerated, such as the construction and sharing of 5G and Gigabit fiber.

"The construction of 5G infrastructure is one of the major tasks for us and now we're working on breaking the walls of telecommunication in the three regions," said Zhu Zhengwei, head of the committee's team on commerce and industrial development. "So far we have built nearly 4,000 5G base stations and by the end of this year, we have a chance to realize that the 5G signals can cover the key areas of the demonstration zone."

Zhu said it is expected that the 5G signals can cover the whole demonstration zone in three years.