Editor's note: The 2024 Lujiazui Forum will be held in Shanghai from June 19 to 20. Inaugurated in 2008,14 editions of the forum have been successfully held, with government officials, financial regulators, market mavens and scholars converging to share their views on the most heatedly discussed industry topics. Over time, the forum has grown into an important platform via which Shanghai consolidates its role as an international financial center. It is also a platform for China's financial regulators to release important announcements. More importantly, it has contributed to China's financial reform, opening-up measures, as well as the global financial governance sector.

I. Highlights of this year's forum

- Forum theme: Promoting World Economic Growth with High-quality Financial Development

- Plenary meetings:

●   Strengthen the coordination of international monetary policies to address the challenges posed during world economic recovery

●   The relationship between technology innovation and capital market's high-quality development

●   Institutional innovation and related market incentives created for the green finance sector

●   Advancing China's institutional opening-up by aligning with high-standard international economic and trade rules

●   Silver economy and ageing finance

●   Innovation and governance for digital finance

●   Construction of a high-quality inclusive finance system

- Workshop centered on financial services that facilitate technology innovation

●   Discussion on how multi-level capital flow can improve the capacity of technology industries

●   Discussion on how an optimized financing ecosystem can accelerate AI development

- Participants

●   Government and regulatory bodies

➢     People's Bank of China

➢     National Financial Regulatory Administration

➢     China Securities Regulatory Commission

➢     State Administration of Foreign Exchange

➢     The municipal government of Shanghai

➢     Monetary Authority of Singapore

➢     Hungarian National Bank

➢     The City of London Corporation

➢     Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau of Hong Kong SAR

●   International financial organizations

➢     International Monetary Fund

●   Trading venues

➢     Shanghai Stock Exchange

➢     Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited

➢     Deutsche Borse Group

➢     China Foreign Exchange Trade System

➢     Shanghai Clearing House

➢     Shanghai Futures Exchange

●   Financial services providers

●   Think tanks

- CSRC agenda

●   CSRC (China Securities Regulatory Commission) Chairman Wu Qing to attend the opening ceremony on June 19 and deliver a keynote speech

●   CSRC vice-chairman Fang Xinghai to deliver a speech on June 19 on the relationship between technology innovation and the high-quality development of the capital market

●   New capital market policies will be released by the CSRC during the forum

II.   Highlights of Shanghai's achievements in financial opening-up

- Advancing inter-connectivity programs

●   Interest rate Swap Connect

●   Stock connect program between Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges

●   Shanghai-Singapore ETF Connect

●   The international reinsurance trading center was launched, attracting the reinsurance operation centers of 15 property and casualty insurance companies

- Further facilitating cross-border investment and financing

●   Shanghai's cross-border RMB settlement volume exceeded 20 trillion yuan in 2023, accounting for more than 43 percent of the country's total

- Accelerating the launch of international financial products

●   The world's first futures shipping product, the Containerized Freight Index (Europe Service) futures contract, launched in August

●   A total of six international futures trading at the Shanghai Futures Exchange directly accessible to international investors. The 30-year government bond futures were listed on the China Financial Futures Exchange in April

- Attracting more financial institutions from home and abroad

●   All of China's six new wholly foreign-owned mutual fund companies are based in Shanghai

●   More than half of China's newly registered foreign-controlled securities brokerages are based in Shanghai

●   92 global asset management firms participated in Shanghai's pilot QFLP program

●   63 global asset management firms participated in Shanghai's pilot QDLP program

- Nurturing technology innovation with better financial services

●   Balance of loans rendered to technology companies spiked 36 percent year-on-year to reach over 1 trillion yuan as of end of March

●   Providing over 48.5 billion yuan in special loans and subsidies to approximately 6,500 technology startups

●   Over 2 trillion yuan to be allocated to the Shanghai technology innovation finance alliance in order to develop new quality productive forces