Source:
https://scmp.com/article/978556/shanghais-blueprint-global-business

Shanghai's blueprint for global business

Following on from its ambitions of becoming a global financial and shipping centre, Shanghai has drawn up plans to turn itself into an international trading hub.

But few substantive policies have been offered in the official blueprint.

In March 2009, the State Council endorsed Shanghai's plans to transform itself into an international financial and shipping centre by 2020. With the official nod from Beijing, the city hoped to receive more support from the state authorities and the securities regulator which would allow it to liberalise financial and capital markets in a series of trial runs.

'The trading centre is not a brand new topic,' Sha Hailin, Shanghai Commission of Commerce director, told a press conference yesterday. 'We want to do a better job in future to achieve the goal.'

Shanghai lobbied the central government to acknowledge its role as an international trading centre in the second half of 2009 after it unveiled the high-profile plan on becoming a financial and shipping hub.

Under the guideline released yesterday, the city aims to boost retail sales from 607 billion yuan (HK$740 billion) last year to 1 trillion yuan in 2015. It also envisages a combined US$540 billion worth of exports and imports in 2015, up from last year's US$369 billion.

The city government didn't give details on how to achieve the goals, reiterating that Shanghai has already laid a solid foundation in terms of advanced port facilities as well as complete banking and information technology.

It wants to boost commerce by building a one-square-kilometre exhibition hall near the Hongqiao transportation hub that would cost 23 billion yuan, according to the guideline.

The city government hopes to attract more international trade fairs to the so-called national-level expo centre, Sha said.

The investment amount of the trading hall is only 6 billion yuan less than the Disney amusement park, a mega project on which the city officials pinned much hope as they strived to boost the local economy.

23b yuan

The cost of a new exhibition hall planned to be built near the Hongqiao transportation hub under the blueprint for Shanghai