- Shanghai-Nanjing Innovation Belt emerges, with Putuo District driving cross-regional collaboration to boost economic growth for 50+ million people
- Putuo officials toured seven Jiangsu cities, signing agreements to form a Collaborative Innovation City Alliance along the railway corridor
- Five trillion-renminbi GDP cities (Nanjing, Wuxi, etc.) and high-speed rail connectivity (<2 hours to Shanghai) fuel synergy in tech, biomedicine and green energy
- Nanjing-Putuo partnership aims to build innovation hubs, enhance culture and tourism integration, and share public services, challenging Shanghai’s traditional dominance
Cross-regional cooperation along the two Shanghai-Nanjing railways is to the fore of late, with a district in Shanghai seeking to position itself as impetus for a new generation of economic development, in a move claiming enormous potential benefit for in excess of 50 million people.
It’s being touted as the “Shanghai-Nanjing Industrial Innovation Belt”. Between 17 February and 13 March of this year, a CCP and government delegation from Shanghai’s Putuo District took out 1 day a week to visit seven cities in our very own Jiangsu Province; Nanjing, Wuxi, Changzhou, Suzhou, Nantong, Zhenjiang and Taizhou.
In each, they met with their local counterparts and signed a memorandum of cooperation for that they call the “Shanghai-Nanjing Collaborative Innovation City Alliance”.
But what of the initially-unlikely choice of Nanjing and Putuo? Located at either end of the Shanghai-Nanjing Industrial Innovation Belt, with similar historical and cultural connections, it is hoped that the two will further find cooperative opportunities.
As The Paper has reported, these could include creating advantages in industrial collaboration, working closer together in scientific and technological research, as well as other sectors, so as to better achieve complementary advantages and mutual benefit.
It’s not just Putuo District which is in on the act. Accelerating the construction of the Shanghai-Nanjing Industrial Innovation Belt has also in fact been written into the 2025 Shanghai Municipal Government Work Report.
So what’s driving all this desire on the part of Shanghai? In part, undoubtedly is the fact we still face an economy in the doldrums to some degree that has led government, businesses large and small, and even individuals, to completely rethink their business models. But then there is also some very simple logic.
The seven cities are all located within a 2 hour commute of Shanghai; the big smoke is now 2 hours from Nantong and Taizhou; 1 hour from Nanjing, Changzhou and Zhenjiang; and just half an hour from Wuxi and Suzhou.
There is also the region’s economic strength, with fully five of Jiangsu’s cities now bringing in an annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of in excess of ¥1 trillion; Nanjing, Wuxi, Changzhou, Suzhou and Nantong. Taizhou has the ambition to surpass that milestone by the end of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, leaving Zhenjiang as the only laggard, with an GDP in 2024 of just over half a trillion.
As to the specifics that some of the cities involved may expect, Suzhou and Putuo will cooperate more in electronic information, biomedicine and advanced materials; Wuxi’s integrated circuits, biomedicine, software and information technology services are a draw for Putuo; while the core of Shanghai fancies Changzhou’s specialties that are new energy, new materials, biotechnology and new-medical devices.
When it comes to Nanjing, the provincial capital will work together with Putuo to create a first-class innovation ecosystem, expand the breadth of integrated development in culture and tourism, expand high-level opening up to the outside world and the sharing of public services.
Historically, Shanghai has often thought of itself as a little superior to Jiangsu and hence, Putuo District is therefore to be lauded in its taking the initiative for this whirlwind of recent activity to visit most of our Province’s top performers. The upshot is that with a bit of luck, the Shanghai-Nanjing Industrial Innovation Belt could well make the high-speed lines that connect Nanjing with Shanghai the lifeblood for millions more people, as they have done for growing numbers during the past decade and more.
