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Economic Development
 Shanghai
is an important economic center, a hub of communications
and a foreign trade port of China, as well as one of
the country's scientific, technological, cultural and
educational bases. It has jurisdiction over 16 districts
and four counties, with a total area of 6,340.5 square
kilo-meters. At the end of 1998, the population was
13.0658 million, accounting for one percent of the national
total. There were 10.7062 million urban residents.
In the past 50 years since the founding of New China.
Shanghai has made tremendous achievements in economic
construction. Especially since the adoption of the policy
of reform and opening to the outside world, the people
of Shanghai have opened up a new development path with
Chinese and era characteristics. Beginning in 1990,
the growth rate of Shanghai's GNP was more than I0 percent
for seven years in succession. In 1998, GDP reached
368.8 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate
of 9.1 percent; and per capita GDP stood at 28,200 yuan,
or more than US$3,300 calculated according to the year's
exchange rate, equivalent to the level of medium-advanced
countries. In 1998, Shanghai achieved 114.6 billion
yuan in financial income, with an average annual growth
rate of 9.3 percent. Its total industrial output value
reached 589.7 billion yuan, with an average annual growth
rate of I0.3 percent. The social retail sales volume
of consumer goods totaled 147.I billion yuan, with an
average annual growth rate of 9.9 percent. Between 1979
and 1998, 18,984 projects with direct foreign investment
were signed, involving US$34.9 billion, with US$24.7
billion actually used. Of the total foreign-invested
projects, large ones involving an investment of more
than US$I0 million made up 68.9 percent; 59 of the world
top industrial trans-national enterprises have settled
down in Shanghai. In 1998, the import and export volume
totaled US$26.046 billion, with an average annual growth
rate of 12.3 percent, of which the total export volume
was US$16.328 billion while the average annual growth
rate was l I.3 percent.
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