Back in 2010, Shanghai was a scene of jubilation because of the World Expo 2010, and many people got to know a bearded Spanish man called Vicente G. Loscertales, Secretary General of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). Eight years later, at the World Expo Museum, Mr. Loscertales came back to Shanghai again.

Sitting in his office on the 50th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center, the city’s second tallest skyscraper, Albert Kong Ping Ng, EY’s China Chairman and Greater China Managing Partner， is a witness to the speed and level of Shanghai’s development since the reform and opening up.

At the Annual Conference of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) held in April, 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech, announcing to the world a range of major initiatives including the wider opening up of the financial industry. As an attendee of the forum, Toyoki Oka, Chairman of Mizuho Bank China and Executive Officer of Mizuho Bank, was very excited, believing that China’s policies to allow more foreign investment in banking and securities firms and its plan to scrap limits on foreign holdings in asset management companies are very attractive and welcoming in the long run.

One day in the fall of 1989, Maurice Greenberg, godfather of international insurance, and Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, had a meeting with then Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji in a hotel in Shanghai’s Puxi area. Looking outside the window, Zhu Rongji pointed to Pudong, which was a field at that time, and told his foreign guests: I feel in maybe two or three years, there will be a city here.“I thought he was kidding,” said Mr. Greenberg, who realized later that Zhu was right.“With the right leadership and a lot of vision, changes came very quickly.”