Beijing, Shanghai Vault into Top 5 Global Innovation Hubs

Zhu Shenshen / China Biz Buzz

The Shanghai Competitive Intelligence Forum 2025 is being held at Shanghai Library.

Beijing and Shanghai have officially secured spots among the world's top five global science innovation hubs for 2025, according to a report released on Wednesday by a Shanghai city-level think tank.

The prestigious global top five are: Beijing, Boston-Cambridge, New York, San Francisco-San Jose and Shanghai. The report, issued by Shanghai Library (Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of Shanghai), also ranked Hong Kong and Singapore within the top 10, signaling a definitive trend toward "multi-polar resonance" in scientific leadership.

The 2025 rankings underscore a shifting global innovation landscape. While traditional powerhouse cities in the United States and Europe maintain their lead in core excellence and influence, primarily due to their deep-rooted research systems, Asian cities, especially those in China, are demonstrating robust momentum in growth potential and strength, the report noted.

Beijing, Boston-Cambridge, New York, San Francisco-San Jose and Shanghai are listed as top five cities for global innovation hubs.

Shanghai's data-driven ascent

The report highlighted Shanghai's explosive growth with a wealth of specific data.

Shanghai published 88,514 SCI-indexed papers in 2024, ranking second globally. SCI stands for Science Citation Index. The city hosts the third-largest number of world-class research institutions and the fourth-largest number of leading science and technology innovation enterprises.

Meanwhile, Shanghai's unicorn companies, referring to private high-tech firms valued over US$1 billion, ranked fifth globally, supported by a strong capital environment. The city's venture capital investment volume ranked fourth globally, demonstrating its appeal for early-stage innovation.

Zhu Shenshen / China Biz Buzz

Song Haitao, director of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, elaborates on Shanghai's humanoid robotics development.

AI and industry drive economic growth

Shanghai's success is fueled by a flexible, mature innovation ecosystem, particularly in artificial intelligence, one of the city's three strategic "pioneering industries." Song Haitao, director of the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, noted the city conducts world-class research in sectors such as humanoid robotics and AI-driven medicine.

This innovation push is translating directly into economic results.

The local statistics bureau reported on Wednesday that Shanghai's GDP expanded 5.5 percent in the first three quarters, outpacing the national average. Crucially, the combined industrial output of its three key sectors – AI, integrated circuits, and bio-medicine – rose 8.5 percent, higher than the overall GDP growth. Output from the AI manufacturing industry alone jumped 12.8 percent during the period.

Future hurdles

Despite the rapid ascent, the Shanghai Library report also identified bottlenecks in the city's future innovation growth. These include a limited number and valuation of unicorn firms compared to global leaders, and a lack of winners for first-class world awards such as the Nobel and Turing prizes, suggesting room for improvement in foundational, globally recognized research breakthroughs.