The Shanghai High-tech Industrial Development Zone was approved as a national high-tech zone in March 1991, and renamed as Shanghai Zhangjiang High-tech Industrial Development Zone (Zhangjiang High-tech Zone) in March 2006. In 2011, the State Council supported the zone when it built a national independent innovation demonstration zone. It is located in Pudong New Area, Shanghai.

Zhangjiang High-tech Zone focuses on the development of "3+X" industrial system with integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence as the core industries. In the future, it aims to strengthen the three major sectors, develop characteristic industries of digital economy, green and low-carbon economy, new energy vehicles, high-end equipment manufacturing, aerospace, information communication, and new materials. It will cultivate cutting-edge industries such as the sixth generation of communication technology, next generation of photonic devices, brain-like intelligence, hydrogen energy, gene and cell technology, and new marine economy.

Zhangjiang High-tech Zone is a core carrier and a pilot zone for Shanghai to build a sci-tech innovation center with global influence. The zone is home to more than 1,700 R&D institutions, nearly 70,000 scientific and technological innovation enterprises, including nearly 4,000 high-tech enterprises.

Zhangjiang is the region with the most complete integrated circuits industrial chain and the highest technical level in China. Seven of the top 10 global chip design companies have set up regional headquarters or R&D centers in Zhangjiang. In terms of artificial intelligence, it owns a whole chain ecology of independent research and development from the hardware to application. It has gathered more than 600 AI enterprises, including ABB, Siemens, Bosch, AMD, and Nvidia.

Its biomedicine industry has the most complete innovation and industrial chain in China. Since Roche, the first multinational pharmaceutical company settled in Zhangjiang in 1994, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Medtronic, GE Healthcare and other global pharmaceutical and medical device giants have come one after another.

By the end of 2021, Zhangjiang has 66 regional headquarters of multinational companies, accounting for 7.9 percent of Shanghai's total, and 179 recognized foreign R&D centers, accounting for more than one third of Shanghai's total. There are 360 listed enterprises at home and abroad, accounting for 62 percent of the city's total. Among them, 50 enterprises are listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, accounting for 85 percent of the city's total.