Two-Minute Tour: Shanghai

The Numbers
Shanghai is China’s largest and oldest major city, though in some ways, its newest and most modern.

Due to its location in the Yangtze River Delta, the eastern-most seaport on the East China Sea, it became an important fishing and shipping port nearly 3000 years ago. (Its name means “upon the sea.”) When China’s door finally opened to the West, coastal Shanghai expanded as a cosmopolitan, international trading hub to become the city of 24 million people that it is today, recording double-digit population growth almost every year for the last 20 years.

The site of World Expo 2010, Shanghai has been at the center of China’s growing international economy, its trading, banking and financial center, location of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Futures Exchange. Its container port is the world’s busiest; and in 2013, it became mainland China’s first free-trade zone.

How international is Shanghai? It will soon be the site of China’s first Disney resort, a $4.4 billion project that’s been under construction since 2010.

The Pulse
In preparation for Expo 2010, China invested in Shanghai’s infrastructure by building ultra-modern roads, a metro transit system, wide tree-lined boulevards and enormous glass and steel commercial and residential towers.

“Parts of the city and its infrastructure were entirely rebuilt,” says Chrissy Minyard, director of digital commerce marketing for Nike China, who has lived in Shanghai since 2011. “As they were able to start practically from scratch, parts of Shanghai are incredibly well-thought-through.”

The Hotspots
As Shanghai has attracted Western businesses, it has become a haven for about a half-million Western expats from North America, Europe and Australia. Many of them cluster in the Jing’an District, part of the old French Concession, where Colonial France set up business after the mid-19th Century Opium Wars carved the city into foreign-run trade zones. Filled with French-style avenues, it’s also a modern, high-end neighborhood of tall apartment buildings, hotels and shops – home to Western retail brands like LVMH and Gucci – and Western-style restaurants where, says Minyard, spending $200 per person is not uncommon.

Obstacles/Opportunities
The Chinese taste for Western brands – especially electronics and fashion – is well-known. But so is the Chinese appetite for “imitating” the merchandise it admires.

Apple may be revered in Shanghai, but locally made Xiaomi smartphones have become the industry front-runner.

“The concept of innovation is sometimes interpreted differently in China,” says Minyard. “It’s not necessarily seen as a negative to be able to imitate quality and reproduce smart innovations.”