(Yicai) May 19 -- Shanghai will go all out to promote the development of five major international centers focused on the global economy, finance, trade and shipping as well as scientific and technological innovation during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, which runs from this year to 2030, the municipal government said.

Shanghai will continue expanding its economic scale, aiming to maintain an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 5 percent over the next five years, Mayor Gong Zheng said at a press conference held yesterday. The city will also strengthen its competitiveness and global influence as an international financial center by improving financial markets, products, institutions and infrastructure so as to better serve the real economy.

Shanghai will enhance its role as a global trade hub, accelerating trade innovation and structural transformation. The city aims to vigorously develop high-end shipping services and promote the digital, intelligence and green transformation of the shipping industry, Gong said.

The municipality will also strengthen its scientific and technological capabilities, promote basic research and breakthroughs in core technologies. By 2030, total research and development spending is expected to reach over 5 percent of the city's GDP, the mayor said.

Over the past five years, Shanghai's urban capacity and core competitiveness have improved significantly. Last year, the city's GDP amounted to CNY5.6 trillion (USD833.5 billion), placing it among the top five cities globally, and per capita GDP climbed to USD32,000. The total scale of the city’s three leading industries, namely integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence, exceeded CNY2 trillion, Gong said.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Shanghai aims to increase the size of all three leading industries to over CNY1 trillion (USD147 billion) and the city's manufacturing output is expected to achieve an average annual growth rate of 10 percent, Tang Wenkan, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, said at the press conference.

To achieve this goal, Shanghai will accelerate the development of a new smart economy. By 2030, the city plans to deploy 100,000 humanoid robots in factories, while the adoption rate of AI agents among large industrial enterprises will exceed 80 percent, Tang said.

Shanghai's intelligent computing power has already exceeded 160,000 petaFLOPS, accounting for about 8 percent of the national total, and there have been major breakthroughs in the development of homegrown AI computing chips, Tang said.

Over the next five years, Shanghai will strengthen the coordinated development of high-performance computing chips, high-quality training datasets and efficient computing clusters to better support AI model upgrades and the large-scale application of embodied AI, he added.

Shanghai will also establish a pioneering zone for basic research over the next five years, providing long-term and stable support for scientists to conduct high-risk, high-value foundational research, Gong said.

"We will optimize the overall layout of the basic research system and better integrate high-quality research resources. We will build a strong talent base for basic research by accelerating the development of an ample, high-quality and well-structured research workforce," Gong said.

Last year, Shanghai’s total R&D spending accounted for approximately 4.5 percent of the city's GDP, and spending on basic research represented 12 percent of total R&D expenditure, according to official data.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor