As China's economy and foreign trade are on the upswing, Shanghai is striving to become the world's leading financial center with great efforts to reform and open up its financial sector.

China was the only major economy that achieved positive economic growth last year. In April, the International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for China to 8.4 percent and predicted that the country's average contribution to global economic growth will exceed 25 percent by 2026.

The robust recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has given great momentum to the financial industry in Shanghai. The city has emerged as a global financial hub by the end of 2020, with total transactions in its financial market hitting 2,274.8 trillion yuan ($355.22 trillion). The latest Global Financial Centers Index 29 (GFCI29) showed that Shanghai ranked third in the world, behind New York and London.

In the first four months of this year, cross-border renminbi (RMB) settlements handled by foreign commercial banks in Shanghai have surpassed those handled by their Chinese counterparts for the first time, which is partly due to the city's continuous efforts to internationalize RMB.

As the Chinese yuan is becoming a global currency, Shanghai is promoting wider opening-up of its financial sector. A variety of financial products, such as stocks on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, are open to foreign investors from different countries, including Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

In the coming years, Shanghai plans to build an international financial asset trading platform, develop offshore RMB transactions, as well as grow into a leading global asset management center.

More efforts are being made in Shanghai to explore financial technologies and green finance. A group of fintech companies, like CCB Fintech, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Construction Bank, have started businesses in Shanghai. Trials of the digital yuan and the regulatory sandbox developed by the People's Bank of China are also well under way in the city.

By the end of this June, a nationwide carbon trading market is expected to be launched in Shanghai in an effort to achieve China's carbon peak and neutrality goals.