The deputy-mayor of Shanghai has outlined ambitions to transform the city into an international hub for the fintech sector.
“Shanghai will actively apply digital technology to invigorate the development of financial innovations, and accelerate the creation of a globally competitive fintech centre,” said Wu Qing (吴清), member of the Shanghai Municipal Party Standing Committee and Shanghai deputy-mayor, on 17 December at the 4th Shanghai Fintech International Forum.
“To this end, Shanghai’s relevant authorities, financial institutions and tech enterprises must combine their forces to forge ahead.”
In order to achieve this ambition, Wu outlined several measures including:
- Deeply driving advances in technological innovation, and making use of leading tech enterprises in fields including artificial intelligence, the blockchain, big data and cloud computing to form strong technological supports.
- Continually improve industry arrangements, accelerate the development of market actors, and attract more fintech companies to Shanghai in sectors including financial infrastructure, banking, securities, insurance and payments. Become a key national cluster for fintech enterprises.
- The orderly implementation of key trials, and greater diversity of innovation scenarios. At present, Shanghai already has nearly 1 million vendors that can support digital renminbi payments.
Wu also highlighted ongoing efforts by Shanghai’s municipal authorities to drive the growth of the city’s digital economy.
“In recent years Shanghai has made the digital transformation of the city a key driving force and continued to raise the capability and core competitiveness of the city,” he said.
“The added value of the core industries of the digital economy already exceed 550 billion yuan, with the cumulative creation of over 100 key application scenarios.”
