Shanghai has set a GDP growth target of above 5.5% for 2023. Mayor Gong Zheng announced the goal while delivering the municipal government work report at the first session of the 16th Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, the city’s legislature. He stressed that Shanghai will continue to pursue high-quality development and further deepen opening-up, making the city the pioneer of Chinese style modernization. “There are opportunities and challenges lying ahead in the realization of this target,” said Sun Lijian, Director of the Financial Research Center at Fudan University. He said 5.5% is a comparatively high figure considering Shanghai’s economic scale, but the city’s high development standards and its economic fundamentals indicate such a goal is achievable. In the report, Gong noted that Shanghai’s GDP surpassed CNY4 trillion in 2022, the second consecutive year it crossed the mark, and its per capita GDP reached CNY178,000.
The Mayor listed 10 key tasks for the year ahead including the implementation of major national strategies; the enhancement of the city’s education system, technology and talent pool; expanding and stabilizing demand; promoting digital transformation; and supporting green development and low-carbon transition. “As the pioneer of Chinese-style modernization, Shanghai is benchmarked against other cities to continue its experiments in opening-up, including turning Pudong into a pioneer of socialist modernization,” Gong said. Shanghai will focus on becoming a leading international center in terms of the economy, finance, trade, shipping and technological innovation. The city will also look to develop its four major functions – allocating global resources, initiating technological innovation, leading development of high-end industries, and being a center of the opening-up policy.
Among all these goals, Sun said, the development of technological innovation is extremely vital. “Building a technological innovation center will serve as a locomotive for the development of the other centers. “Breakthroughs in technology achievements will help remove bottlenecks in various areas and bring our high-quality economic development to a new level,” Sun said. In the report, digitalization was highlighted, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), electronic information, advanced materials, the metaverse and smart business. According to Gong, the expenditure on R&D as a percentage of the city's GDP is projected to reach about 4.3% this year. In the coming five years, it aims to raise the proportion of the digital economy in the city’s overall GDP to 18%, the China Daily reports.
Beijing has set its 2023 economic growth target at above 4.5%, with a similar growth for residents' income. The city will strive to keep the urban unemployment rate at below 5% and maintain annual inflation at around 3%. According to acting Mayor Yin Yong's report at the annual session of the municipality's People's Congress, Beijing's GDP has exceeded CNY4 trillion, and its per capita GDP has exceeded CNY180,000 in 2022, ranking the highest among provincial-level regions and reaching the medium level of the developed economies. Actually utilized foreign investment in the city since 2018 exceeded USD75 billion, the Global Times adds.
