A future Shanghai: Uniting the 'Five Centers' like a clenched fist to excel - 2025-12-29
Peng Zhihui, or better known by his nickname Zhihui Jun and "Wild Iron Man" online, used a technical term, multimodal coordination, to describe the advantage of Shanghai – the city where his company is located.
The entrepreneur was recruited by Huawei's program for the genius in 2018. Now at age 33, he is co-founder of Shanghai Zhiyuan Innovation Technology Co Ltd that makes humanoid robots.
In his business, multimodal technology refers to enhancing the understanding and reasoning capabilities of artificial intelligence models by integrating data from multiple modalities such as images, text, audio, and video.
And for Shanghai, the term indicates the city's strength in building the "Five Centers", namely the International Economic Center, International Financial Center, International Trade Center, International Shipping Center, and International Center for Sci-Tech Innovation. How to further integrate and coordinate the growth of these "Five Centers" will determine the level of the city's development in the next five years, or in its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030).
Peng Zhihui, or better known by his nickname Zhihui Jun and "Wild Iron Man" online
"The coordination has always been in place," said Wang Sizheng, president of the Shanghai Society of Macroeconomics, citing a circular scenario that when the trade center expands, the demand for finance and shipping will increase, driving the rise of manufacturing, and the international economic center will naturally consolidate.
It took quite a long time for Shanghai to evolve from a single economic center to the current establishment of "Five Centers" while the city's role has also shifted from serving the country to connecting the world. The addition of each center means new development possibilities.
Compared with other global metropolises such as New York, London and Paris, Shanghai possesses unique resource endowments. The city simultaneously boasts a strong manufacturing sector, a sound financial system, comprehensive trade networks, developed shipping ports, and outstanding scientific research capabilities.
So, how to better combine the strength of these centers?
If it is a question of mathematics, the answer is definite, as it can be formed in pairwise combinations such as finance plus sci-tech innovation, and triple combinations, like finance plus sci-tech innovation plus trade… When all are counted, there are 26 different combinations in total.
This calculation is straightforward, but has significant implications. Each combination represents an aggregation of energy, a diffusion of innovation, and a possibility for connection. With the construction of the "Five Centers" as a key mission, Shanghai should try to maximize the synergistic effect of these 26 combinations.
Xue Hongli, chief economist of SPD Bank, pointed out that 80 percent of the world's top 10 sci-tech innovation centers are simultaneously financial centers, and vice versa, 80 percent of the world's top 10 financial centers are also sci-tech innovation centers.
"It is working because sci-tech innovation centers attract investment for financial centers, while financial centers promote circulation for sci-tech innovation centers," Xue said.
One recent example is the initial public offering of chipmaker Moore Threads. (Translator's note: It's often called "China's Nvidia.") Its shares price surged fivefold from the offer level on its debut on Shanghai's Nasdaq-like STAR Market, and attracted global attention for its dazzling performance, and for the function of Shanghai's stock market as well. The STAR Market has launched six measures, including a pilot pre-review for IPOs of high-quality technology-based enterprises that are yet to make profit, as part of the reforms to better fund technological startups.
The triple combination of trade, finance and sci-tech innovation is also working well. Shanghai is building an industry application based on blockchain around the shipping and trade field – Shipping and Trade Data Chain – exploring application scenarios such as cross-border electronic invoices, cross-border commodity traceability, and electronic bills of lading. In the future, financial institutions can rely on the Shipping and Trade Data Chain to provide auxiliary verification for on-chain entities in trade settlement, trade finance, cross-border insurance through on-chain certification and cross-matching of electronic documents.
On the West Bund waterfront in downtown Xuhui District, the Mosu, or Model Speed Space has become a new landmark as China's first specialized incubation hub for artificial intelligence models.
There is also broader four-party cooperation. The Container Shipping Index (Europe Route) Futures listed on the Shanghai Futures Exchange recently has an average daily trading volume exceeding 10 billion yuan (US$1.43 billion). Although it seems like a financial derivative innovated by the financial center, it adopts the real shipping price index of the shipping center, providing import and export enterprises of the trade center with a risk management tool to hedge against fluctuations in sea freight prices, while the sci-tech innovation center provides digital technology for data collection, analysis, and futures trading of this product.
More connections are taking place. Shanghai Guomao Holdings Co Ltd, established just in November, has become a new-type international bulk commodity trading platform, aiming to enhance the international influence of "Shanghai Prices" with the most advanced digital technologies. This state-owned enterprise has its strength rooted in the advantages of the "Five Centers" – focusing on trade, having strong shareholders, including financial firm Shanghai International Group and Shanghai International Port (Group) Co Ltd, that offer indispensable technological support and, of course, the market support of Shanghai as an economic center.
Driven by the correlated combinations, innovation can be endless.
"This requires Shanghai to make persistent efforts, strengthen international benchmarking, and promote international collaborations as well as to improve the function of the centers," said Zhang Zhongwei, deputy director of the Shanghai Development and Reform Commission.
If we look at each of the "Five Centers," we can see Shanghai is already a global leader, but if Shanghai hopes to strive for further excellence in future competition among the world's best cities, it needs to leverage the advantage of uniting the "Five Centers" like a clenched fist.
Source: City News Service
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