With China at the doorstep of membership to the World Trade Organisation, the Shanghai municipal government is wasting little time staking its claim on the future.
Since the start of the month, the city has been boldly fleshing out plans to make Shanghai the leading information technology production and research centre in the mainland.
Local government leaders are unhesitatingly bullish. Speaking earlier this month to an audience of bureaucrats, state industrialists and university officials, Shanghai's normally quiet Party secretary Huang Ju appeared invigorated.
The next decade, he said, would allow local industry to capitalise on the basic infrastructure investment it has made over the past decade. Shanghai's information technology sector, valued at about 100 billion yuan (HK$93.7 billion) this year, is poised to grow at 25 per cent per annum over the next five years.
Clearly, Shanghai has a leg-up on the competition.
Among the government's immediate goals is to develop the mainland's most formidable semiconductor base.