On September 19th, the UK think tank Z/Yen Group released the 26th "Global Financial Center Index (GFCI 26)". In this issue, although the third consecutive time ranked fifth, the gap between Shanghai and the top four financial centers is further narrowing.
According to the official website, the GFCI index is jointly compiled by the UK think tank Z/Yen Group and the China (Shenzhen) Comprehensive Development Research Institute. It is updated every March and September, mainly from the business environment, human resources, infrastructure, development level, international Reputation and other aspects of the evaluation and ranking of the world's major financial centers. In this issue of the Global Financial Center Index, a total of 104 financial centers entered the list. The top ten financial centers in the world are ranked in the following order: New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Beijing, Dubai, Shenzhen, Sydney.
Compared with the previous ranking, the order of the top five has not changed, but the scores have declined to a different extent than the previous period. Among them, London and Hong Kong scores dropped by 14 points and 12 points respectively, ranking with the number one in New York. The gap has widened again.
It is worth noting that the score gap between Shanghai and Singapore was reduced from the previous two points to one point in the current period. From the historical rankings, the gap between Shanghai and the first place was 193 points, and now the difference is only 29 points.
It is understood that Shanghai has maintained its fifth position for three consecutive times, and the gap with the fourth city has been narrowing. On the one hand, it has benefited from the improvement of the degree of opening up of the country's finance, especially since the national financial opening up policy has been accelerated since last year. In order to promote a new round of higher-level financial opening to the outside world; on the other hand, it also benefited from the continuous optimization of Shanghai's business environment. In this index, Shanghai ranks seventh in the world in terms of business environment.
At the same time, Shanghai's financial opening is still advancing in depth, and there are frequent actions in attracting foreign investment.
In August of this year, Shanghai launched a number of opinions on promoting the development of regional headquarters of multinational corporations. From six aspects, it deployed the functional organizations such as multinational corporations headquarters to gather in Shanghai, expand functions and upgrade energy levels, and actively participate in the construction of Shanghai's “five centers”.
On September 16, the Shanghai Municipal Government held a centralized signing ceremony for foreign-funded projects, and 42 projects were contracted with a total investment of about 7.7 billion US dollars. Among them, there are 15 large projects with more than 100 million US dollars, covering smart manufacturing, biomedicine, chemical, integrated circuit, commerce, finance and other fields.
On September 18th, the “Several Opinions on Further Promoting Foreign Investment in the City” was issued, and 26 measures were proposed to further expand opening up, further attract foreign investment, and further protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors.
Data show that from January to August 2019, 4,661 new foreign-funded projects were established in Shanghai, an increase of 47.8% year-on-year. Contracted foreign investment was US$32.46 billion, up 9.6% year-on-year, and foreign investment was US$13.108 billion, up 13.4% year-on-year. At present, the number of regional headquarters of multinational corporations in Shanghai has exceeded 700, making it the city with the largest number of regional headquarters and foreign-invested R&D centers.
In this ranking, in addition to Shanghai, there are six cities in China, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Chengdu, entering the top 100 list.