Shanghai will keep building itself into a landmark consumption city, strengthening its function as a consumption hub, optimizing the shopping environment, improving the quality of consumption supply, and making it a first choice for global new products launch and a global consumer destination, and gradually form a commercial civilization that matches its status as a socialist modern metropolis of international prestige.

Accelerating the construction of an international consumption center city is the new urban function positioning of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council for Shanghai, and it is also an important deployment for Shanghai to better serve and build a new development pattern.

As Shanghai strives to become a central node of the domestic economic cycle and a strategic link between domestic and foreign markets, undertaking the important task of building an international consumption center city will provide it with an important source of power, growth poles and support points for it to attract and gather global consumption resources, improve consumption functions and magnitude, and construct a socialist modern metropolis of international prestige at a faster pace.  

As a top consumption city, Shanghai has a huge consumer market. In the first half of this year, the total retail sales of consumer goods in Shanghai reached RMB 904.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30.3%, which was 7.3 percentage points higher than the national average and ranked first among all cities in China. Shanghai has a unique market advantage in building an international consumption center city. A distribution center for import and export commodities that coordinates with the Yangtze River Delta region, serves the whole country, and influences the Asia-Pacific region is being formed at an accelerated pace.

As a city of fashion, Shanghai is leading the trend in consumer supply. Up to now, the concentration of world-renowned high-end brands in Shanghai has exceeded 90%, and the number of first stores and flagship stores here ranks first in China. International brands prefer to launch new products in Shanghai. The launch, debut, and exhibition of new products and the first stores continue to enhance Shanghai’s status and magnitude in the global consumer market.

As an “innovation highland,” Shanghai boasts strong business innovation vitality. New business types and models such as unmanned retail stores and community e-commerce are constantly emerging, and a large number of leading companies with strong resource allocation capabilities are gathered here. Hema Xiansheng was founded here, and consumer Internet companies such as Meituan, Tuhu, Xiaohongshu, and Ctrip continue to expand their consumption boundaries and innovate online and offline consumption models, making Shanghai the creation place and arena of new retailing.

In order to speed up the construction of an international consumer center city, Shanghai has proposed a three-year action plan for making “Shanghai Shopping” a stronger brand, deployed 8 special actions and 24 specific tasks, and set goals with high standards: By 2023, Shanghai’s total retail sales of consumer goods will reach over RMB 1.8 trillion, and the city’s online shopping transactions will reach around RMB 1.6 trillion. The number of leading local brands will reach around 160, and the number of newly introduced first stores of brands will exceed 2,400...

The blueprint has been drawn, and now it is time to forge ahead. To make the brand of “Shanghai Shopping” stronger, there are still many tasks to complete. In the next step, Shanghai will keep building itself into a landmark  consumption city, strengthening its function as a consumption hub, optimizing the shopping environment, improving the quality of consumption supply, and making it a first choice for global new products launch and a global consumer destination, and gradually form a commercial civilization that matches its status as a socialist modern metropolis of international prestige. We believe that by the end of the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, Shanghai will be built into an international consumption center city.