Shanghai's Zhangjiang area will accelerate its development into a world-class science city and a center of scientific innovation during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025).

The Zhangjiang Science City, formerly the core of the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, is one of the Pudong New Area's major science and technology achievements over the past three decades and now one of the main forces for Shanghai to become an international center of scientific innovation.

A blueprint was recently drawn up with a list of 180 key projects worth more than 200 billion yuan (US$30.75 billion).

It focuses on five major fields – science facilities, platforms supporting the application of innovations, urban functions and facility ecology and industrial upgrading.

The area of the Zhangjiang Science City will be more than doubled, mainly to the east and the west, from 95 square kilometers to 220 square kilometers.

The plan is a key phase for the area's transformation and its upgrading from a high-tech park to a science city, said Peng Song, executive deputy director of the Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Center Development Office.

Peng also stressed the importance of attracting and retaining talents, and pledged to optimize comprehensive urban service functions to meet their needs.

The construction of the Zhangjiang Science Hall is due to be completed by the end of the year, and it is due for its stress test in the second quarter of 2022.

In Zhangjiang's sci-tech central business district, the building will cover 115,000 square meters, with a main stage of 6,000 square meters, a 4,000-square-meter multipurpose room and 17 other rooms for meetings or exhibitions.

It aims to serve as a stage for various events such as international summits, roadshows, sci-tech competitions and cultural activities, to create an open and comprehensive platform for communication on science and technology.

The Zhangjiang Science City saw breakthroughs in the 13th Five-Year Plan in core technologies in the three leading industries of integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence, with an average annual growth of over 10 percent.

The area has attracted more than 22,000 enterprises, including over 1,600 high-tech enterprises, and is now home to 170 foreign-funded research and development centers.

It has also lured more than 400,000 sci-tech professionals, including Nobel Prize winners, overseas academics, academics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as well as leading figures in different industries.