Shanghai will focus on low-altitude economy, commercial aerospace, embodied intelligence, biomanufacturing, and intelligent terminals, aiming to establish them as the city's five major new industrial growth points. In the journey of serving national strategies and forging industrial strengths, Shanghai is forging ahead with determination, continuously shaping new drivers and advantages for development. It has been learned that based on the existing industrial foundation, projected market growth during the "16th Five-Year Plan" period, and project resource requirements, Shanghai will concentrate on these five areas, striving for their collective scale to reach the trillion-yuan level during the "16th Five-Year Plan" period.
Reportedly, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Shanghai has seen five advanced manufacturing clusters selected as national-level clusters. These include three clusters selected in the first batch—integrated circuits, Zhangjiang biomedicine, and new energy vehicles—as well as two newly added in 2024: the large aircraft cluster and the shipbuilding and marine engineering equipment cluster. These five national-level manufacturing clusters and the five new industrial growth points align closely with Shanghai's strategic layout of building a new industrial system led by three pioneering industries and creating four trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters. Together, they will form the industrial pillars for high-quality economic development.
The rise of five national-level clusters marks a significant achievement, while cross-regional collaboration opens a new chapter. Examining Shanghai's five national advanced manufacturing clusters reveals they are not merely "individual champions" in their respective fields; they collectively form a high-end matrix for Shanghai's manufacturing sector through diverse development models and leadership roles. Particularly noteworthy is the Yangtze River Delta (including Jiangxi) large aircraft cluster, which, as the nation's first cross-provincial advanced manufacturing cluster, has pioneered a new paradigm for regional industrial collaboration. Centered on Shanghai and covering the three provinces and one municipality of the Yangtze River Delta plus the entire province of Jiangxi, with core development zones in Shanghai's Lingang, Wuxi in Jiangsu, Hangzhou in Zhejiang, Lu'an in Anhui, and Nanchang in Jiangxi, this cluster has already surpassed one trillion yuan in total industrial output value. Shanghai plays the core roles of the "brain" and "final assembly," focusing on the development and final assembly of large aircraft, as well as core components like aero-engines and avionics systems, while the Yangtze River Delta and Jiangxi regions form complementary supply chains with their respective advantages. As the C919 enters large-scale operation with orders exceeding one thousand units, the C909 regional jet is delivered in batches, and the C929 wide-body aircraft steadily progresses in development, a self-sufficient, secure, and efficient large aircraft industry chain is rapidly taking shape across the Yangtze River Delta and beyond, becoming a vivid practice of regional collaboration in building national strategic strength.
The other four clusters are also highly substantial: the Zhangjiang biomedicine cluster brings together over 2,700 upstream and downstream enterprises and has seen more than 20 domestically developed Class 1 innovative drugs approved for market, leading the nation in quantity; the new energy vehicle cluster, with Jiading District as its core, leverages leading companies like SAIC and Tesla to aggregate a full industrial chain ecosystem spanning smart chips, lidar, and solid-state batteries. Last year, Shanghai's cumulative promotion scale for new energy vehicles ranked first among global cities, while its open-road testing mileage and scenario breadth for intelligent connected vehicles lead domestically; the integrated circuit cluster, with an industry scale exceeding 390 billion yuan last year and a 25% share of the national total, firmly holds the top spot in domestic comprehensive competitiveness; Shanghai is also the only city in the world to possess all three "crown jewels" of the shipbuilding industry: aircraft carriers, large cruise ships, and large liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers. In 2024, the output value of ships and marine engineering equipment reached 120 billion yuan, placing Shanghai at the forefront globally in terms of the completeness of high-tech ship categories and innovation density.
Four trillion-yuan-level clusters have taken shape, marking an overall leap in industrial capability. Driven powerfully by the five national-level clusters, Shanghai's industrial capability has achieved an overall leap forward. Four trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters—electronic information, automobiles, high-end equipment, and software and information services—have now formed, serving as the ballast for stable economic growth and the main engine driving new quality productive forces. According to Chen Feifei, Director of the Comprehensive Planning Division of the Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, Shanghai's four trillion-yuan-level clusters have "grown" from 10 key industrial chains. In 2024, the scale of Shanghai's electronic information industry had already reached 1.2 trillion yuan, ranking second in the TOP50 city competitiveness index for core electronic industries. The city has now gathered over 1,200 leading enterprises in the integrated circuit sector, and cutting-edge fields like AI large models and intelligent sensors have fostered a vibrant innovation ecosystem. The automobile industry is reshaping its advantages amidst the revolution in electrification and intelligence. Behind the 1.1 trillion-yuan scale lies a complete ecosystem encompassing vehicle manufacturing, the three electric systems (battery, motor, electronic control), intelligent cockpits, and autonomous driving. Shanghai is transitioning from a "City of Automobiles" towards a "Smart Auto Valley." The high-end equipment industry has also crossed the trillion-yuan threshold. It not only serves as the foundation for the C919 soaring in the skies and the batch production of large LNG carriers but also continues to make breakthroughs in "national heavy equipment" like heavy-duty gas turbines, deep-sea mining equipment, and industrial robots. The software and information services industry, with a scale exceeding 1.8 trillion yuan, has become a key force supporting the city's digital transformation and the integration of the digital and real economies, holding leading national positions in sub-sectors such as industrial software, internet services, and fintech.
Aiming for growth through "hardcore" breakthroughs, targeting world-class competitiveness. While consolidating its existing industrial base, Shanghai is actively cultivating emerging pillar industries. For the "16th Five-Year Plan" period, the focus will be on the five new growth areas—low-altitude economy, commercial aerospace, embodied intelligence, biomanufacturing, and intelligent terminals—with the goal of their collective scale reaching the trillion-yuan level during this period. Shanghai is a national leader in the low-altitude economy. The Jinshan District East China UAV Base is one of the nation's first civil unmanned aerial vehicle test zones, and over half of China's leading eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) companies are based in Shanghai. Minhang District has established an industrial alliance, initially forming a pattern of collaborative development. Recently, the Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization and other departments jointly issued the "Several Measures for Shanghai to Link with the Yangtze River Delta to Accelerate the Construction of a Low-Altitude Economy Advanced Manufacturing Cluster." This document, for the first time treating the low-altitude economy as an advanced manufacturing cluster, sets clear phased targets: by 2028, Shanghai's core low-altitude economy industry scale should reach around 80 billion yuan, forming a complete industrial chain system for new low-altitude aircraft, building a national advanced manufacturing cluster for the low-altitude economy, and accelerating the city's progress towards becoming a "World eVTOL Capital" with prominent comparative advantages.
In the field of commercial aerospace, Shanghai will intensify efforts during the "16th Five-Year Plan" period on key technologies such as reusable rocket high-thrust engines and recovery systems. It will accelerate the development of commercial satellites for direct-to-cell phone connectivity, intelligent computing, and radar remote sensing, and construct commercial constellations like the Qianfan Constellation and the Smart Sky Network for communication and remote sensing. In embodied intelligence, Shanghai is progressively establishing a commercial closed loop from "technology R&D - scenario validation - large-scale deployment." Zhangjiang has gathered nearly 200 related upstream and downstream enterprises and has established platforms including the nation's first heterogeneous humanoid robot training center and an open-source community. In biomanufacturing, Shanghai aims to build a "1+5" core innovation capability system. This comprises an "AI+" intelligent microbial development and manufacturing system, plus five common technologies: efficient utilization of non-grain bio-based raw materials, biological conversion technology for inorganic carbon sources, creation of chassis cells, design of low-cost enzymatic catalytic pathways, and disruptive bioreactors. Currently, giants like Google and Apple are seizing the opportunity presented by AI development to accelerate the launch of new terminal products. Shanghai also possesses unique advantages in developing intelligent terminals, having already gathered a group of leading enterprises such as ZTE (Nubia), Ingdan, Huaqin, and Longcheer. The plan is to cultivate a number of globally influential intelligent terminal brands by 2030, with the scale of AI PCs, AI phones, and other new AI terminals each exceeding ten million units.
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