Mayor Gong Zheng salutes past, outlines brilliant future

Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng shared hopeful messages with citizens on New Year's Day, thanking the public for their contributions to the achievements the city made in 2022 and calling for further efforts to create new miracles in the new year.

Here is the letter from the mayor:

Fellow citizens, comrades and friends.

At this beautiful moment of bidding farewell to the old year and ringing in the new, on behalf of the Shanghai government, I would like to extend New Year's greetings and sincere best wishes to the people of Shanghai and to friends at home and abroad who care about and support the development of Shanghai.

The year 2022 was of great significance, as at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we drew up a blueprint for comprehensively building a modern socialist country and comprehensively promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese-style modernization.

In the past year, we have braved wind and rain and made steady progress in development.

In the face of the severe situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the people of the whole city rallied together to help each other and made painstaking efforts to win the "Great Shanghai Defense War."

Under the impact of factors beyond expectations, we effectively coordinated pandemic prevention and control with economic and social development.

The whole city worked hard to overcome difficulties and made all-out efforts to achieve a V-shaped reversal of economic development, effectively accomplishing all the goals and tasks of the government.

The leading role of the Pudong New Area in China's new journey to fully build a modern socialist country has become more prominent, and the efforts in the development of the Lingang New Area in the free trade zone, the pilot registration system of the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta have all yielded fruitful results.

The 5th China International Import Expo was held as scheduled. The city's three forerunner industries – integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence – reached 1.4 trillion yuan (US$203 billion) in industrial scale.

In the past year, we have stayed true to our original aspiration and made every effort to fulfill the mission to improve people's lives. We put great effort into stabilizing market entities and ensuring employment. We implemented a series of bailout policies and reduced taxes and fees by 300 billion yuan for various enterprises. More than 550,000 new jobs were created in the city.

We also worked hard to improve people's livelihood and accelerated the development of 15-minute community life circles. More facilities for elderly care, childcare, fitness, cultural entertainment and medical care have been built near our homes. More expectations for a better life are being realized.

The year of 2023 is the first year to implement the blueprint laid out at the 20th CPC National Congress and also a crucial year for the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025).

With a stronger sense of mission and responsibility, Shanghai should spearhead reform and opening up and be a pioneer in innovation and development, so as to better demonstrate Shanghai's city spirit and show the world the bright future of Chinese-style modernization.

We should make speeding up high-quality development the primary task in our modernization drive.

We should continue to give top priority to development, comprehensively promoting reform, opening up and innovation, carrying out major national strategic tasks, deepening the development of the city as a center of international economy, finance, trade, shipping and scientific and technological innovation, strengthening its four functions of allocating global resources, leading scientific and technological innovation, directing the development of high-end industries and serving as a hub for opening up, vigorously boosting market confidence, striving to stabilize growth, employment and commodity prices, and promoting effective qualitative and quantitative economic growth.

We should take creating a high-quality life as an important goal of our modernization drive, always giving the best resources to the people and working hard in everything related to public livelihood, ranging from education and medical care to elderly care, childcare and housing, to improve residents' lives.

We should take highly efficient governance as a solid guarantee for our modernization drive. We need to fully understand development rules, make meticulous efforts to manage the city and further promote one-stop government services and integrated urban management, making the city more resilient and making the city a better home.

Hard work builds a brilliant future. Let's beef up efforts to develop the city into a modern socialist international metropolis of global influence and create more remarkable miracles in the new journey.

I wish you good health, success and happiness in the New Year.

May our great Motherland prosper, and the people live in harmony!