Shanghai to have 100+ STAR-listed firms in 3 years

Shanghai is going to have more than 100 firms listed in the Nasdaq-like STAR Market within next three years, which will boost city innovation and digitized development, city officials said.

Shanghai takes a leading position in new patent application growth among all STAR-listed firms nationwide, thanks to its mature and friendly entrepreneurship environment, according to consulting firm PatSnap.

Shanghai will support more firms to issue initial public offerings, over 100 by 2025 in the STAR Market, as a young innovation-oriented board in China.

With support for talent and finance, Shanghai will have over 100,000 small and medium-sized innovation enterprises by 2025, double the current level, said Wu Jincheng, director of the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Informatization, during a conference to introduce the city's three-year plan for high-quality development and innovation.

Credit: Ti Gong

Currently Shanghai has 82 STAR-listed firms, ranking No. 2 in numbers, and No. 1 in market value nationwide. Banks, government bureaus and investment funds are encouraged to bring support for SMEs on innovation and tech firms for IPOs when they are ready, said Tao Changsheng, chief economist of the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau.

STAR-listed firms have applied for over 200,000 patents since its debut four years ago. The top regions for company patent volumes are Jiangsu Province, Guangdong Province, Shanghai and Beijing, said PatSnap, a patent and research analysis firm.

But in the past 12 months, Shanghai's STAR-listed firms new application patent volume jumped 35.7 percent, ranking the No. 1 nationwide. It mainly comes from the city's improved business environment and development of bio-medicine and integrated circuit industries.

By 2025, industrial revenue of the city's three strategic sectors, namely integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence, will reach world-leading levels. The research spending of core manufacturing enterprises will surpass 2.5 percent of their total revenue to boost innovation, according to city officials.