(Yicai) March 20 -- Shanghai’s green and innovative development will be facilitated by ‘new quality productive forces’ that put more emphasis on whether the production is green, ecological and sustainable, scholars from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences said recently.

‘New quality productive forces,’ which were a hot topic at the country’s recent policy meetings the Two Sessions, will pursue an increase in output, just like the old productive forces, but they will also focus more on whether the manufacturing is environmentally friendly, said Liu Liang, deputy head of SASS’ Institute of Applied Economics, during an academic salon held in Shanghai yesterday.

It is these ‘new quality productive forces’ that will provide the foundation to build Shanghai into “the five centers,” namely international economic, financial, science and technology, shipping and trade hubs, he added. Technologies and innovation will replace investment as a major driver of the evolution of productive forces.

Green innovation will be a strategic direction in the future and both Chinese and foreign businesses need to adapt to this change, said Zhan Yubo, a researcher at the SASS Institute of Economics.

China will continue to welcome foreign investment, Zhan said. But overseas investors need to improve production efficiency if they wish to keep up with the competition in the Chinese market.

Shanghai is now proactively boosting the growth of green finance, said Zhou Fengqi, head of the SASS’ Institute for Ecological Economy and Sustainable Development.

China needs to construct a new energy system that is more efficient and low-carbon, to meet its goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and realizing carbon neutrality by 2060, Zhou said. Demand for financing in sectors such as renewable energy, energy storage and electric vehicles provides room for the development of green finance.

Last April, Shanghai’s Pudong New Area issued an action plan for climate-related fundraising. And at the end of last year, Shanghai rolled out a scheme for the banking and insurance sector to facilitate the growth of green finance as part of the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan, which runs from 2021 to 2025.

Editor: Kim Taylor