Yangpu District mayor Xie Jiangang had an interview with reporter from Eastday.com.(Photo:Fan Yicheng)

Recent years have seen huge change in Yangpu district, Shanghai. Few MNCs settled down in Yangpu due to its weak infrastructure and not obvious location advantage five years ago; however latest statistics showed that 5 MNCs’ regional headquarters including Henkel and Auchan and two institutes of HQ of Siemens and ISS have settled down in the district at the end of September, 2015. Besides, R&D centers, sales centers and other institutes with HQ functions of Nike, IBM, Lear, EMC, KFC and other world-renowned MNCs keep pouring in Yangpu.

The east of downtown Shanghai, southwest and central zone were among the multinational companies’ favorite locations before the year of 2010. But Yangpu District recently becomes a new choice for MNCs. What happened in the district during these years? What kind of elements do the today’s Yangpu appeal to MNCs? Yangpu District mayor Xie Jiangang shared his opinion during the interview with reporter from Eastday.com.

Yangpu District realized the transitional development in recent years from “industrial Yangpu” to a district of “Knowledge & Innovation”. Xie considers agglomeration of science & education and talent resources as its first advantages, “there’re 10 universities in Yangpu, half of which has around 100-year history; we also have much more overseas high-level talents, including 160 people from the national Talent Plan and 82 from Shanghai’s Thousand Overseas High-level Talents Plan.”

Enterprises-universities-researches integration is also an important element helping the district realize innovative development and industrial transformation. Xie introduced that Yangpu has co-constructed around 20 science & technology parks with universities and research institutes; the district also strengthens cooperation with SOEs including AVIC and CSSC.

What’s more, Yangpu innovation service system is increasingly complete. A service chain from pre-entrepreneurship, nursery of starting a business, business incubator, the accelerator to science & technology park has formed to provide support of the overall process for the entrepreneurs with low cost and even zero cost.

"Yangpu will make efforts to appeal to more MNCs’ HQs, R&D centers and innovation unions so as to make more foreign capital to participate in Shanghai’s construction of science and innovation center," Xie said confidently.