The Shanghai Master Plan (2017-2035), which was officially launched at the end of 2017, will guide Shanghai to develop into an excellent global city. This goal has since provoked deep thinking and heated discussions in the city. On the afternoon of April 1, a symposium on Striving for the Excellent Global City: Global City Theory Frontiers & Shanghai Practices was held at Shanghai Center Tower, where well-known scholars from home and abroad gathered together to offer their advice on how to accelerate the development of Shanghai into an excellent global city.

Mr. Zhou Zhenhua, chairman of the Shanghai Economist Association and author of the books “Globalizing cities: Theoretical Frameworks” and “China's Modes, Globalizing cities: Evolutionary principles and Shanghai in 2050”, said that the first steps are to open up minds, transform concepts and have a deep understanding of the nature of the city, in order to find the correct direction of development for the city. Secondly, Shanghai should fortify its foundations, focus on the key aspects that can most affect development and leverage its strategic strengths. He emphasized the importance of creating an attractive business environment as a core basis. “If a business environment armed with global interaction standards is absent, a city will still fail in its effort, despite all other good conditions, to become an excellent global city even when opportunities turn up, as the prominence of a global city is very much dependent on the level of congregation of specialized global institutions and companies", said Zhou Zhenhua.

“Shanghai is one of my favorite global cities,” said Saskia Sassen, Tenured Professor in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, who first coined the term “global city”. “I believe the future belongs to China and you are capable of reform and innovation. I am very interested in how China, a country capable of leading the changes of our times, will address the development of cities in this era. The best part of the target of building an excellent global city lies in the many new topics derived from that.”

Wu Zhiqiang, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and vice-principal of Tongji University said that environmental and ecological management and improvement form the very baseline for, and provide a guarantee on, the vitality of a qualified global city.

Professor Jiang Chuanhai, Principal of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, held that there are seven dimensions to improving Shanghai’s capability in global resources allocation. These are: emphasizing Shanghai’s roles as both a central city and a gateway city; striving for excellence in both localization and globalization; building innovative ecological systems with enhanced congregation of innovation elements; increasing participation and strength of voice in global governance systems through increased social capital; having an inclusive approach to talent strategy; improving public policies in support of globalization through systematization and legalization; and finally balancing economic development and ecological protection.