There were more regional headquarters of multinational companies and foreign-funded research and development (R&D) centers located in Shanghai in 2022, which contributed to the high-quality development of the city.

Last year, a total of 60 regional headquarters of multinational companies and 25 foreign-funded R&D centers were newly established, and the total number of them reached 891 and 531, respectively, by the end of 2022. Shanghai has become a city that enjoys the most prosperous headquarters economy in China.

As a foreign-funded R&D center, Siemens Shanghai Medical Equipment Ltd, or SSME, was founded in 1992 in the Pudong New Area. According to Kong Jun, general-manager of SSME, the company boasts half of the global share in Computed Tomography (CT) equipment manufacturing. Currently, the company has invented in more than 60 types of equipment, and its localization rate of the supply chain has reached 80 percent.

The booming headquarters economy also contributed to Shanghai's steady economic growth in 2022 when the pandemic negatively influenced China's economy. Last year, a total of 4,352 foreign-invested enterprises newly set up regional headquarters in Shanghai and the actual use of foreign capital in Shanghai reached 23.96 billion yuan ($3.53 billion), a slight increase of 0.1 percent.

At the same time, there were 71 key foreign-invested projects launched in Shanghai in 2022, with the total investment reaching 64.3 billion yuan, which helped the city's headquarters economy thrive.