A total of 32 international industry leaders, including Guotai Junan Securities, multinational conglomerate Honeywell and domestic augmented reality glasses maker Xreal, were granted the Win-win Pudong Partnership on Thursday.

The new partnership mechanism was launched during a Pudong's investment promotion conference held on Thursday. The mechanism aims to solicit new businesses by giving more play to leading investment banks, law firms, consulting firms, and companies taking core role in the industrial chain. This mechanism has been introduced to address the new trends in global economic integration and China's economic transformation and upgrading.

Aiming to attract 298 billion yuan ($41 billion) of investment in 2025, Pudong has managed to land over 100 billion yuan of investment in the first quarter. According to Wang Yihua, head of Pudong's investment promotion services center, projects concerning integrated circuit, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, culture and tourism have made up the most of the first quarter investment.

Wu Jincheng, head of Pudong New Area, said at the Thursday conference that continued efforts will be made to direct more market resources to the development of new quality productive forces.

On one hand, industrial parks should attract more industry leaders while seeking differentiated positioning. More intelligent manufacturing space should be promoted in Pudong, including creating industrial spaces in buildings and introducing more low-cost land and land for comprehensive purposes. While 7.44 square-kilometer of low efficiency industrial land was better used in 2024, another 4.96 sq km of such space will be revitalized this year, said Wu.

As of end 2024, Pudong is home to 1,285 private fund managers, with the asset under management exceeding 1.79 trillion yuan. The area's total balance of technology loans was more than 350 billion yuan at the end of last year.

The area's three State-backed fund of funds saw their combined value approaching 60 billion yuan. The fund of funds' investment in strategic emerging industries rose 25 percent year-on-year in 2024. They have also directly invested in 43 companies listed on the STAR Market at the Shanghai bourse.