On August 31 in the afternoon, Yang Xiong, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, and Mayor of Shanghai, delivered a speech to classes of SPI, which covered international and domestic situations and key tasks of reform and development faced by Shanghai in its development. In the face of increasing complex external environments and the tightening trend of our own conditions, Yang Xiong said we should deeply recognize that Shanghais development could go nowhere without doing innovation and transformation. We should accelerate the changes in ideas and concepts, trains of thought for development as well as working methods. In combination of the planning the "Thirteenth Five Year Plan", we should shift our development focus to improving quality and efficiency, our development power to innovation-driven, our industrial structure to service economy and innovation economy, our production method and life style to green low-carbon style, and our institution mechanisms to utilising more market mechanisms.

    Yang Xiong pointed out that, at present, Shanghai is in the critical period of a new round of extensive readjustments and great transformation. Important and profound changes have taken place in external environments and our conditions. Relative to the whole country, Shanghais economic development reached the New Normal much earlier and more obviously embodies the features of a higher stage. We need to take the initiative to adapt to and lead the New Normal, and advance the innovation and transformation with greater confidence and determination on the basis of initial results of economic transformation and upgrading.

    "The main objectives, general requirements and principle lines of Shanghais Thirteenth Five-Year Plan development are preliminary specified. We should continue to be a good "vanguard" of the national reform and opening up, and pioneer of innovation development as well." Yang Xiong said the construction of Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone is a major national strategy, and an important breakthrough for us as a good vanguard of reform and opening up. We must always focus our attention on the institutional innovation. In the first half of this year, we established the 2015 Working Arrangement of Pilot Free Trade Zone and replicated and spread Implementation Scheme city-wide. Various tasks are being actively carried forward in an orderly manner. Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation is a new requirement from the Central Government to the development of Shanghai, and an important breakthrough for us to be a good pioneer of innovative development as well. We must firmly follow the general orientation of the worlds scientific and technological progress, the general trend of global industrial transformation, and the big move of talent aggregation, and adhere to the strategy of serving the country and the economic and social development, and vigorously promote the comprehensive innovation centred on scientific and technological innovation, to form the basic framework system of the Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation by 2020, and establish the core functions as a key city in science, technology and innovation by 2030.

    With respect to the major research achievements of the Municipal Party Committee last year, Yang Xiong said, innovating social governance and strengthening the construction of grass-roots is a basic task for the overall and long-term development. The transformation from "administration" to "governance" should be promoted based on the requirements of social governance by taking the people as the core, the urban and rural communities as the focus and the institutional innovation as the key. The core is to promote the functional transformation of towns and sub-districts so they can concentrate on service and management, and focus their work on serving the masses rather than investment attraction. The core in promoting the integration of urban and rural development is to push forward the comprehensive rural reform actively and steadily, to accelerate the transformation of the rural production methods and life style, to drive the scale management of agriculture, the converging residence of farmers and the concentrated manufacturing industries in park areas. We should improve the rural infrastructure construction, public service, and construction of ecological environments, and strive to realize the urban and rural equalization in" basic public service in general by 2020.