Ma Chunlei, deputy secretary-general of Shanghai Municipal Government, said at the municipal government press briefing that Shanghai is an international city and the central government expects Shanghai to be built into an excellent global city. Notably, Shanghai has done a great job in terms of many globally recognized indexes, ranked ninth in Globalization and World Cities (GaWc), sixth in the Global Financial Centers Index (GFCI) and ninth in the A.T. Kearney's Global Cities, just to name a few.

“World Bank's Doing Business is a metric with wide global influence and Shanghai and Beijing are two exemplary cities for World Bank to evaluate China’s business environment,” Ma Chunlei said. In December of last year, the World Bank's Doing Business expert team came to Shanghai to hold discussions with competent government departments on a variety of issues, including cross-border trade, real property registration, business start-up procedures, and protecting minority investors. The team also visited a few related government service desks and thus obtained a more accurate knowledge of the actual business environment of Shanghai.

The Ministry of Finance and the World Bank will also hold senior seminars in Shanghai on “International Experience in Optimizing Business Environment and Its Inspiration to China” to further exchange information and experience.