The third session of the 14th Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the city's political advisory body, opened on Jan 14.

The session had received a total of 434 proposals from the city's CPPCC members by Jan 13. Among them, 143 were collective proposals submitted by democratic parties, people's organizations with various committees within the political advisory body, and the rest were submitted by individual CPPCC members.

The content of the proposals covered various aspects of economic and social development. Altogether 169 of them were on economic construction, and 29 were on political construction. There were also 39 on cultural construction, 166 on social construction, and 31 on the construction of ecological civilization.

Quite a few proposals focused on the city's efforts to build itself into an international center in economics, finance, trade, shipping, and science and technology innovation.

In their proposals, some CPPCC members suggested institutions of higher education in Shanghai to expand the scale of biomedicine-related majors, introduce more outstanding talent from overseas, and further facilitate customs clearance so as to support the innovation and development of the sector of biomedicine, one of the three leading industries for Shanghai.

Some CPPCC members also proposed to provide more convenience for expats living in Shanghai, removing obstacles regarding their application for documents and making payments among others.