Shanghai: Promoting the high-quality development of the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" through the "Five Converging Forces".

During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Shanghai will focus on promoting high-quality development as its primary task, accelerating the construction of the "Five Centers", cultivating new productive forces for development, serving the construction of a new development pattern, implementing high-level reform and opening up, and advancing the building of a people's city. Gong Zheng, Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Mayor, introduced that Shanghai will adhere to the construction of the "Five Centers" as the main direction of attack, coordinating and leading various aspects of economic and social development. The city will focus on enhancing its position as an international economic center, continuously increasing its economic total, with the aim of achieving an annual GDP growth rate of around 5%; enhancing the competitiveness and influence of the international financial center, improving the financial market, products, institutions, and infrastructure system, and carrying out the "Five Major Tasks" in finance; pushing for the upgrading of the international trade center, strengthening its trading hub functions, accelerating trade innovation and structural transformation; enhancing the resource allocation capabilities of the international shipping center, vigorously developing high-end shipping services, and promoting the digitalization, intelligence, and green transformation of shipping; strengthening the function of the international scientific and technological innovation center as a source of strategies, deepening the construction of strategic scientific and technological forces, promoting basic research and key core technology breakthroughs, and increasing the proportion of total social research and development expenses to GDP to over 5% by 2030. Gong Zheng stated that cultivating new productive forces for development is the key to promoting high-quality development in Shanghai. Shanghai will play the role of a "vanguard" in promoting the deep integration of scientific and industrial innovation, and accelerate the transformation of innovative potential into industrial momentum. "Serving the construction of a new development pattern is crucial in making domestic demand the driving force of economic development." Gong Zheng said that Shanghai will continue to combine benefiting people's livelihood and promoting consumption, investment in assets and investment in human resources, further strengthening its role as a central node in the domestic circulation and a strategic link in the domestic and international double circulation.