Seizing Future Tech Innovation Opportunity: How Can Shanghai Build a World-Class Innovation and Sustainable City?

Editor's Note:

The International Business Leaders' Advisory Council for the Mayor (IBLAC) brings together top executives from leading multinationals to share insights on Shanghai's development strategy. Each company brings forward a paper that draws from its global practices as well as local insights. Shanghai Daily has selected and summarized some of the most insightful recommendations for the city.

This report focuses on Shanghai's 2030 development strategy, set against a backdrop of global economic restructuring and rapid scientific and technological advancement. It analyzes the role of core fields such as artificial intelligence and sustainable development and explores opportunities for synergistic innovation in future development strategies.

Shanghai has already achieved remarkable progress in the field of AI. The city's AI sector exceeds 450 billion yuan (US$63 billion) and Shanghai ranks among the top Chinese cities in terms of registered generative AI large models.

The city has fostered AI development through the "Modeling Shanghai" initiative and built industrial ecosystems such as "Grand Neobay" and the "Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center" to achieve deep implementations in sectors like health care and manufacturing.

Shanghai is also a recurring host of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, an important global platform for AI collaboration and advancement.

The city has emerged as a national leader in China's green transition, achieving strong results across a range of areas: energy structure optimization, industrial transformation, green transportation, carbon markets, green finance, and green technology research and development (R&D).

Its development strategy integrates multiple components into a comprehensive green development framework.

Our research suggests that AI has become a key factor in global urban competitiveness. We also see a shift, with AI transitioning out of the initial "large model craze" and into a new phase focused on value realization.

The current stage is focused on building underlying capabilities, expanding high-impact use cases, and strengthening the supporting ecosystem. Thirteen leading cities have accelerated AI development by enabling deep integrations in manufacturing, healthcare, and governance, while also encouraging innovation and ecosystem development among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A deep transformation is also under way in sustainable development. The focus is shifting from energy supply to consumption, with green consumption emerging as an important driver of urban transformation.

Global leaders are effectively transforming green concepts into real-world consumption habits by establishing standards, guiding consumer behaviors, and promoting ecological value transformation.

Taking all of this into context, we propose a development strategy to help Shanghai address these challenges and seize emerging opportunities over the next five years.

Shanghai will focus on strengthening R&D in cutting-edge technologies, deepening industrial AI integrations, unleashing innovation in SMEs and building a more resilient industrial ecosystem, designing institutional innovation to mitigate ethical risks, and promoting regional synergies and global linkages.

Meanwhile, it will strive to tackle the frontier of green consumption, and make every effort to build a global sustainable consumption center through a series of measures, including building a globally recognized green standards ecosystem, developing an innovative two-wheeled mechanism to align policy and behavior, using digital and carbon management practices to create new opportunities for smart consumption, building a global hub for green consumption resource allocation, and creating value and driving consumption through ecological renovation.

This report also proposes a development strategy for the integration of AI + green computing and AI-enabled green consumption. By leveraging innovations in AI and sustainable development – and integrating both into a unified approach – Shanghai can drive technological advancement, economic growth, and environmental stewardship.

Pursuing these strategies synergistically will amplify Shanghai's wisdom and position the city as a global model for urban sustainable development.