The 2026 Xuhui District Quality Conference and the Fifth District Government Quality Award Ceremony took place on September 8 at the West Bund International Convention Center. Three organizations and three individuals received the Xuhui District Mayor's Quality Award, while six organizations and two individuals were honored with the Xuhui District Quality Gold Award. District Deputy Secretary and Mayor Wang Hua, along with Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision Administration Deputy Director Wang Yiyang and other district government leaders, attended the event.
The award-winning projects this year focused on key sectors including services, healthcare, cultural creativity, and high-end equipment manufacturing. The roster of honorees reflects Xuhui's years of dedicated efforts in quality management. Over the years, Xuhui has steadfastly pursued a path of quality-driven development, aligning quality initiatives with urban progress. The district's GDP has crossed two additional "trillion-yuan" thresholds, surpassing 400 billion yuan and ranking first among central urban areas.
Four industry clusters—digital economy, life sciences, cultural creativity, and fintech—have taken shape, while the cumulative number of multinational company regional headquarters and foreign R&D centers has reached 178, also ranking first in the central urban districts. A series of rankings affirms the district's high-caliber performance. Xuhui has accounted for over 20% of municipal government quality awards for two consecutive sessions, ranking first citywide. Its business entity development quality index has led the city for two straight years, and the number of "Shanghai Brand" certifications remains the highest in the city.
In technological innovation, R&D expenditure intensity stands at 6.46% of GDP, with high-value invention patents per 10,000 people and total PCT international patent applications both ranking first in central urban districts. In artificial intelligence, the district hosts 108 registered large models, representing nearly 57% of the city's total.
In line with Shanghai's push to expand and upgrade the services sector, Xuhui continues to foster integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, sports, and exhibitions, cultivating new consumption scenarios. Among the organizations receiving the Mayor's Quality Award, Shanghai Metro City Commercial Management Co., Ltd. and Xuhui District Library (Xujiahui Academy) serve as prime examples.
Metro City has pioneered a quality management model based on "certification as the foundation, business integration as the core, and culture as the soul," continuously enhancing its operational management capabilities and customer service standards, transitioning from experience-driven to data-driven management. This summer, Metro City collaborated with four major intellectual properties under China Literature, refreshing the mall's visual presentation and creating an immersive "Chinese animation metaverse" for consumers, generating new growth in consumer demand and achieving mutual empowerment between the retail brand and animation IPs.
"Receiving the District Government Quality Award marks a new starting point for continuously improving our quality management capabilities, and it will inspire us to keep advancing on the path of quality brand building," said Chen Menglu, Party Branch Secretary of Shanghai Metro City Commercial Management Co., Ltd.
The Xuhui District Library (Xujiahui Academy), meanwhile, has developed a quality management model dubbed the "Reading Treasure Box" that promotes a reading culture spanning all ages, all generations, and all communities. Deputy Curator Shou Yingzhi explained that the model's spiritual roots trace back to the "light-chaser" spirit of Xu Guangqi, a pioneering scholar of the Shanghai school. Through this system, the academy has transformed from a traditional single-function library into a comprehensive public cultural institution, steadily elevating its service capabilities and making quality cultural resources more accessible in residents' daily lives.
The recently concluded 2026 Shanghai Book Fair Xuhui branch events served as a vivid example of the "Reading Treasure Box" quality management model in practice. Catering to the diverse cultural needs of residents across age groups and professional backgrounds, the academy curated a variety of activities including exhibitions, interactive experiences, and engaging performances, responding to the public's expectations for a better life through high-quality cultural offerings.
Building a quality-driven district is a shared challenge for all Shanghai districts. Xuhui's answer centers on accelerating its goal of becoming a national AI hub, focusing on four dimensions simultaneously: quality talent cultivation, standard leadership, brand certification, and quality services—creating a distinctive approach to quality work serving the AI industry.
On the talent front, since launching the Chief Quality Officer system, Xuhui has cultivated more than 250 chief quality officers and established the city's first "dual-chief" training program (combining Chief Quality Officer and Standardization Director roles) focused on the AI sector, injecting talent momentum for high-quality regional development. In standard-setting, institutions including Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, SenseTime, and Kupasi have led or participated in developing more than 40 AI-related standards. SenseTime spearheaded the drafting of China's first national standard for customer-service virtual digital humans, while district enterprises also hold positions in international and domestic standardization technical bodies including ITU and IEEE working groups on generative AI, large models, and embodied intelligence.
In brand certification, the "Model Space" innovation community—the country's first large-model ecosystem—passed "Shanghai Brand" certification in just ten months, becoming the first organization in the AI field to receive this credential. High-profile projects such as Shanghai Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and China Telecom AI Research Institute have subsequently landed in the district, setting benchmarks for AI innovation ecosystem branding. On service empowerment, Xuhui is building one-stop quality service hubs at Fenglin Park and the Bei Yang AI Town, providing enterprises with full-chain technical support spanning quality diagnosis, inspection and testing, and standards development.
Looking ahead, Xuhui will continue implementing its quality-driven district strategy, strengthening the guiding role of quality and standards, stimulating quality innovation vitality across industries, building a solid quality infrastructure, and enhancing regional competitiveness to contribute to the vision of an "Innovative Xuhui, Quality District."
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