View of Pudong Photo: cnsphoto

 
Shanghai's Pudong New Area will continue to drive high-quality development by introducing a number of major reform measures in terms of institutional innovation, platform development, urban governance, and people's livelihood. This is to better meet the requirements of a guideline on high-level reform and opening-up, as local officials stated on Monday.

It has been almost two years since China's central government issued a guideline aiming to build Pudong into a pilot area for socialist modernization, and Pudong has been working towards that goal ever since. For instance, 413 out of the specified 450 tasks in the guideline have been accomplished or have seen breakthroughs over the past two years, according to Zhu Zhisong, party secretary of Pudong New Area, who spoke at a press conference on Monday.

As Pudong strives to promote high-level opening-up, the area has witnessed the establishment of China's first wholly foreign-owned securities company, the first wholly foreign-owned public fund management company, and the launch of the Southeast Asian center and the East Asian center of the Belt and Road Technical Exchange and International Cooperation Center. Additionally, Pudong has implemented other institutional innovations in terms of trade.

These reform and opening-up efforts have yielded tangible results in high-quality development, promoting the continuous upgrading of local industries. Last year, the industrial scale of Pudong's integrated circuits, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence industries exceeded 220 billion yuan ($30.39 billion), 330 billion yuan, and 120 billion yuan, respectively. The past two years have also witnessed a series of significant innovation results, such as the inaugural commercial flight of C919, China's self-developed large passenger aircraft, and the successful launch of China's first domestically built large cruise ship. Additionally, the world's largest container ship, built by China State Shipbuilding Corporation, with a capacity of 24,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit containers, was completed and delivered.

Looking ahead, Pudong will continue to make efforts to introduce major reform measures and implement major infrastructure and support policies, as stated by Wu Weiping, director of the Pudong Development and Reform Committee, during the press conference on Monday.

Specifically, at the important juncture of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the pilot free trade zone in Shanghai, Pudong will focus on institutional innovation benchmarking international high-standard economic and trade rules, such as CPTPP and DEPA. Pudong will also promote further opening-up to undergo greater stress tests, Wu noted.