On the morning of May 7, the Information Office of Shanghai Municipality held a press briefing, where Liu Jian, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai Municipal Government and director of the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission outlined the city’s key initiatives for advancing its 2026 campaign to optimize the business environment through the “Top Ten Breakthrough Tasks.” Zhou Xiaoyan, deputy director of the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal Government, Chen Yanfeng, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Peng Wenhao, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation, and Ji Zengling, head of the Cybersecurity Corps under the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security, attended the briefing and answered questions from reporters.This year marks the launch of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan period. On the first working day of the year, Shanghai convened its annual business environment conference for the ninth consecutive year and released version 9.0 of its action plan to improve the business climate. Since the plan’s rollout, coordinated efforts across municipal, district and township-level authorities, together with support from various sectors of society, have helped sustain strong economic momentum. Shanghai posted a robust start to the year, with first-quarter GDP growing 5.9% year on year, 0.9 percentage points higher than the national average and marking the city’s fastest first-quarter growth rate in the past five years.Last year, Shanghai selected ten key business environment reform tasks that addressed urgent corporate concerns and required cross-departmental coordination. The city said the measures delivered notable results over the past year. Authorities will continue advancing the 2026 “Top Ten Breakthrough Tasks” this year, with a focus on stronger coordination and supervision to ensure early implementation and tangible results within the year.Ⅰ. Key Outcomes of the 2025 “Top Ten Breakthrough Tasks”First, major progress has been made in addressing companies’ core concerns. Shanghai launched two major digital platform tools last year that significantly improved the efficiency of government services and regulatory oversight. First, the city introduced “Suishendui,” a unified online portal for business support policies, to further expand the “policy benefits without application” mechanism. To date, 826 policy programs at the municipal and district levels have been made accessible through the streamlined system, benefiting businesses more than 7.06 million times. Second, Shanghai fully rolled out the use of inspection QR codes to standardize administrative inspections involving enterprises. Under the mechanism, “no code, no inspection” and “all inspections must display a code.” As a result, the number of inspections declined by more than 40% year on year in 2025, while corporate satisfaction with administrative inspections exceeded 99.8%.Second, a series of pioneering institutional innovations has been introduced. In strengthening the “credit plus risk” regulatory framework, Shanghai issued guidelines for a “comprehensive plus sector-specific” credit evaluation system. To curb profit-driven professional claims and malicious complaints, authorities released several opinions on law-based governance of professional compensation claims and professional whistleblowing activities, helping reduce malicious professional complaints by 35%. To improve the online business environment, the city launched version 2.0 of its service package for handling enterprise-related infringement information and carried out targeted campaigns to clean up the online environment. In enhancing the efficiency of corporate bankruptcy procedures, authorities in public security, market regulation, taxation, planning and natural resources, and financial regulation introduced supporting policy measures, enabling bankruptcy administrators to perform their duties more effectively.Third, Shanghai has also further strengthened long-term coordination mechanisms for improving the business environment. In financing services, the city enhanced its coordination mechanism for small and micro enterprise financing, with cumulative seamless loan renewals exceeding 1 trillion yuan last year. In intellectual property protection, Shanghai established a coordination mechanism for the protection of overseas-related intellectual property rights. At the grassroots level, the city fully implemented the “local call, departmental response” mechanism for subdistricts and townships, improving their ability to address corporate demands and provide business services more efficiently. Thanks to the joint efforts of districts and government departments, Shanghai’s business environment governance framework has become more comprehensive and broader in scope. According to enterprise survey results released by the World Bank in 2025, Shanghai achieved global best-level performance in 22 out of 59 business environment assessment indicators, surpassing New York, Singapore and Hong Kong in those categories. Meanwhile, Shanghai also recorded a marked improvement in the latest “Business Environment Evaluation by 10,000 Private Enterprises” survey conducted by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce.Ⅱ. Main Priorities of Shanghai’s 2026 “Top Ten Breakthrough Tasks”Against a backdrop of a complex and evolving domestic and international economic environment, Shanghai will continue to use business environment reform as a key lever to stabilize employment, support enterprises, sustain market confidence and strengthen growth expectations. The city aims to further unleash the vitality of market entities and reinforce the endogenous drivers of economic development. This year, Shanghai will focus more closely on corporate concerns and deepen reforms in terms of scope, precision and implementation effectiveness to further elevate the city’s business environment. The Top Ten Breakthrough Tasks are:1. Improving business support policy services. Shanghai will enhance the coherence, clarity, convenience and effectiveness of pro-business policies. Priority will be given to strengthening coordination between municipal and district-level policies, reducing cumbersome application procedures and simplifying unnecessary expert review processes. 2. Optimizing administrative inspections involving enterprises. Building on the citywide rollout of the inspection QR code system, Shanghai aims to ensure inspections are “less frequent, more effective and better regulated.” Key measures include expanding joint inspection models centered on integrated supervision scenarios and formulating standards for non-onsite inspections. 3. Enhancing financing services for small and medium-sized enterprises. The city will improve financing support and credit enhancement for SMEs through better bank-enterprise information matching. Shanghai is establishing a unified financing support platform named “Suishenrong,” upgrade financing service centers and standardize financing intermediary services. 4. Standardizing bidding, tendering and government procurement. Shanghai will strengthen industry supervision and promote fair competition. Key initiatives include formulating detailed implementation rules for domestic product standards policies, improving mechanisms for identifying and handling abnormally low-price bids, and piloting AI-assisted bid evaluation and smart regulatory systems. 5. Improving the online business environment. In response to new forms of online infringement involving enterprises, Shanghai will launch version 3.0 of its service package for handling enterprise-related infringement issues. Authorities will also urge online platforms to improve review mechanisms for enterprise-related information and establish faster response and coordinated enforcement mechanisms.6. Strengthening government-court coordination in bankruptcy proceedings. Shanghai will improve coordination mechanisms between government authorities and courts in handling corporate bankruptcy-related administrative matters, facilitate corporate liquidation procedures and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of bankruptcy restructuring. The city will also improve the handling of cross-border bankruptcy cases and explore the establishment of an early-warning mechanism for bankruptcy risks. 7. Enhancing intellectual property protection. To address issues such as lengthy rights protection procedures and difficulties in evidence collection, Shanghai will strengthen the institutional framework for intellectual property protection. Key measures include improving fast-track patent pre-examination services for key industries and refining IP protection mechanisms for emerging sectors.8. Strengthening business environment development in industrial parks and office buildings. Shanghai will expand its grassroots business environment initiatives from subdistricts and townships to industrial parks and commercial office buildings. The city plans to release guidelines and practical handbooks for business environment development in parks and office buildings, helping operators improve integrated service capabilities and business ecosystems.9. Improving mechanisms for handling enterprise-related complaints and requests. To further streamline channels for resolving corporate concerns and strengthen closed-loop management, Shanghai will enhance the analysis of enterprise-related complaints and improve research into recurring issues. Authorities will also strengthen the policy interpretation functions of the city’s 12345 government service hotline knowledge base. 10. Optimizing regulation and services for new business models. In response to gaps in regulatory and approval requirements for emerging sectors, Shanghai will strengthen mechanisms for identifying new business models, clarify regulatory responsibilities in a timely manner, and improve the efficiency and procedures of supervision and administrative approvals in emerging industries.