Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng delivers a speech at the “Shanghai Night” event. [Photo/WeChat account: shanghaifabu]
Business leaders of major multinationals lauded Shanghai’s business environment and its opening-up measures, casting a vote of confidence in China’s economic growth during the World Economic Forum 2025 annual meeting this week at Davos in Switzerland.
They made the comments while attending a reception on Jan 21 local time, hosted by Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng. He led a delegation to Davos and discussed a wide range of topics with many business leaders, including the further development of Shanghai’s business environment.
In his speech at the “Shanghai Night” event, Gong said its attractiveness as a global investment hub, an innovation highland and a prime destination for entrepreneurship continued to grow.
Gong said Shanghai would accelerate the construction of its “five centers” — namely, an international economic center, financial center, trade center, shipping center and science and technology innovation center — to promote stable economic growth, foster new quality productive forces, deepen high-level reforms and opening-up, as well as to create a world-class business environment.
Shanghai would continue to provide greater opportunities for global enterprises to invest and operate in the city, he added.
Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng holds discussions with business leaders and institution representatives. [Photo/WeChat account: shanghaifabu]
Severin Schwan, chairman of the board of directors of Swiss healthcare company Roche Group, said: “I think Shanghai is really positioned to be one of the major innovation hubs in the life science industry. That, I have no doubt.
“Because it has always been the door to the West. It has a tradition of being a host for the business world, for innovation, for technologies. So, I’m very optimistic about the future of Shanghai.”
Currently, Schwan also serves as the chair of the International Business Leaders’ Advisory Council for the Mayor of Shanghai. It convenes leading multinational leaders every fall to give advice to the city, ever since the initiative was set up in 1989 by then Shanghai Mayor Zhu Rongji.
Stefan Paul, CEO of global logistics giant Kuehne+Nagel International AG, who became a member of IBLAC in 2023, echoed Schwan by saying that he appreciated Shanghai for the connectivity of his business with the mayor.
“In all honesty, I’ve never experienced it in any other city in the world: How much engaged the mayor and his entire team are in order to attract foreign investments and develop Shanghai into a multimodal hub… it’s really second to none from my perspective versus other cities.”
Paul said Shanghai was very important for the company’s sea freight service, which opened its Shanghai office in 1983 — making it one of the first foreign logistic companies to do business there after China adopted its reform and opening-up policy.
Last year, Shanghai Port became the world’s first port to handle 50 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in annual throughput.
Describing the milestone as “very impressive”, Paul added: “We support open trade and we also support our customers moving their cargo from Asia, from China to the rest of the world and vice versa.”
Fabrice Megarbane, chief global growth officer of French cosmetics company L’Oreal Group, who spent many years working in Shanghai, praised the innovation and openness of the city. He said it had launched many measures to implement China’s opening-up policies, which “allow companies to accelerate investment and better build their business ecosystem”.
Megarbane highlighted the importance of innovation in the beauty industry, adding that the high-quality development of China had made a positive impact on the sector.
“We’ve been launching a Big Bang program that works with startups to work out innovative solutions,” he said. “Innovation is the name of the game, and Shanghai is the flagship of this innovation in China. So, we are very much determined to continue our investment and to grow in the market,” Megarbane added.
“China has also become a very big market, so the contribution of this market’s growth to the overall beauty market worldwide would be significant. This is why the growth story of China is still ahead,” he concluded.
Source: Official WeChat account of the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government at “shanghaifabu”
,https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-WhatsNew/20250123/4818804ce7cc4bf9a1b781a5e6071586.html