Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news

Shanghai is preparing for the building of three public service centers to strengthen its position as a national technology base. The centers will provide facilities for measuring, information about standards, and  quality testing. The facility will help China advance and upgrade its manufacturing industry.
Construction of the Shanghai Assessment Center, a 150,000-square-meter project at the Pudong Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, is nearing completion, with the frame construction of its nine-storey office building finished. 
The center, a 1 billion yuan (US$192 million) investment, is scheduled to start operation at the end of year for nano, biochemical, environment and other advanced scientific fields.  Currently, the center is bringing in world-class measuring facilities. 
The Shanghai Institute of Standardization, a second service center, opened last year to help building standards.  By April, the institute's online service system had received 560,000 visitors and provided 224,000 pieces of standard information to companies from across the nation. Construction of the institute's second-phase will start in June a system to automaticly track and alarm the world's technological barriers.
As well, the city is establishing a comprehensive quality testing base -- a third public service center -- by recombining its existing product quality testing systems for the automatic, electron, chemical, light industry and food sectors as well as adding other testing centers.
Upon completion, the center will be the biggest of its type nationwide, containing more than 20 national quality-testing centers.