Wenhui Opinion The ‘Action Plan for Promoting New Infrastructure Construction (2020-2022) in Shanghai’ identified four major construction actions including “new networks”, “new facilities”, “new platforms” and “new terminals”, and clarified 48 major projects and engineering packages with a total investment of 270 billion yuan! The Shanghai version of “new infrastructure construction” aims to provide industrial support and facility guarantees for the digital economy and the new economic models, enabling the digitalization of industries and the integrated development of secondary and tertiary industries. Compared with the “new infrastructure construction” in other regions, the Shanghai version has four distinctive features and advantages. First, the city will promote digitalization of the industrial chain by developing “new networks”. The new-generation information technology is transforming the nature of the global industrial chain, and the digital trend is accelerating. Modern manufacturing is increasingly manifested in the form of intelligent manufacturing. The production-oriented service industry is quickly evolving into a new model where production and services are deeply embedded. The life-oriented service industry is increasingly dependent on information and digital carriers. Under Shanghai’s “new networks” construction initiative, the city aims to take the lead in building the world’s leading new-generation network infrastructure. 5G technology with ultra-high network speed, ultra-large bandwidth, and ultra-low latency will be a “universal technology” in the digital economy era and can be used in almost all industries. Shanghai’s “new infrastructure construction” plan requires high-level 5G and fixed-line gigabit broadband networks, while speeding up the deployment of industrial Internet clusters across the entire networks, developing more than 100 unmanned factories, unmanned production lines, and unmanned workshops, and supporting  150,000 enterprises to adopt cloud-based platforms. Shanghai’s “new networks” construction initiative not only adapts to the trend of digitalization in the world’s industrial chain, but also takes a lead in building a global information and communication hub, thus laying a solid foundation for leading the trend of digitalization in the industrial chain. Second, the city will promote platform-oriented development of the innovation chain by developing “new facilities”. The innovation chain in the era of digital economy gives priority to sharing and reuse of factors in a bid to reduce costs and enhance competitiveness. The digital platforms that the innovation chain relies on provide an online interaction mechanism between the supply and demand sides of various factors, transforming the structure of the innovation network from the traditional central-peripheral structure to a fully connected network ecology. The point-to-point (P2P) connection is quickly expanding on the innovation chain, and various innovation entities share significant positive external effects with each other. Once this innovative “new facility” is formed, it can continuously lower R&D costs and improve R&D quality for all innovation entities and boost the interdependence and collaboration between innovation entities. Such “new facilities” include innovative technological facilities and technological industrialization facilities. Shanghai’s “new facilities” construction initiative builds on the science and technology innovation center, the “three highlands” of integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, and biopharmaceutical, as well as the improved capability of technological and industrial innovation infrastructure. It also focuses on the world’s cutting-edge scientific research trends to plan and construct new major innovation platforms. Third, the city will strengthen the digitalization of the value chain by developing “new platforms”. In the process of digitizing the world economy, a brand new “data value chain” is being formed. From a micro perspective, in terms of business opportunities generated by data and digital intelligence derived from data collection and analysis, the increasing commercialization of data is creating a new value chain. From a macro perspective, the non-competing characteristics of data factors make them have a significant nature of increasing returns. The increasing returns to scale will be a new mechanism for sustained economic growth in the digital economy era. The “Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on the Construction of More Established Market-Oriented Allocation System for Factors” identified data, land, labor, capital, and technology as the five major factors. The “new platforms” construction initiative in Shanghai is to focus on the massive data resources of the ultra-large city, build a full-factor urban data system, and create an urban data value chain with global influence. On top of this, Shanghai’s “new platforms” construction initiative also calls for sharing and integration with data resources of other cities in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, in a bid build a high-level data factor platform and data value chain in the Yangtze River Delta, and take a leading position in the global data value chain. Fourth, the city will accelerate the development of intelligent supply chains by constructing “new terminals”. In terms of supply chain intelligence, artificial intelligence, 5G, Internet, big data, blockchain and other intelligent interactive technologies will be leveraged to create online, intelligent, interactive and integrated business models in the fields of modern manufacturing, business & finance, entertainment & consumption, education & health, and logistics & mobility. Global supply chains are increasingly going intelligent and online. In the past 10 years, the growth rate of exports in ICT services and digitally delivered services has been much higher than the overall growth rate of service exports. Intelligent supply chains depend on the strong support of “new terminals”. On one hand, Shanghai will accelerate the construction of urban infrastructure systems such as intelligent logistics, intelligent medical care, fresh food cold chain, new energy vehicle charging piles, intelligent transportation, big data centers, and industrial Internet, and realize interconnection of infrastructure systems with other cities in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. On the other hand, the city will improve global communications connection speed, output bandwidth and data processing capacity in the intelligent supply chain in a bid to become a first mover as the global supply chain goes intelligent. Author: Yin Desheng (Dean of the School of Economics, East China Normal University, Director of the Research Center of China Economy)