SHANGHAI, Jan. 23 -- China's financial hub Shanghai has set its regional gross domestic product (GDP) growth target at about 5 percent for 2024, according to the annual session of the municipal people's congress on Tuesday.

Shanghai's GDP reached 4.72 trillion yuan (about 663.7 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, up 5 percent year on year, the city's mayor Gong Zheng said while delivering a government work report at the ongoing second session of the 16th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress.

Shanghai, at the forefront of China's reform and opening up, performed well in terms of foreign trade last year, with its combined import and export value reaching a record high of 4.21 trillion yuan.

Container throughput of Shanghai Port topped 49.15 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), ranking first in the world for 14 consecutive years, the report said.

In 2023, the actual use of foreign capital in Shanghai hit 24 billion U.S. dollars, also a record high. The report showed that Shanghai was home to 956 regional headquarters of multinational corporations and 561 foreign-funded R&D centers, including 65 and 30 established last year, respectively.

New growth engines continued to drive the economy of the metropolis. Last year, the scale of Shanghai's three leading industries, namely integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence (AI), reached 1.6 trillion yuan, according to Gong.

As a result of the city's efforts to achieve its carbon peak goal, the number of new energy vehicles in Shanghai amounted to over 1.28 million last year, ranking first among cities worldwide.

During the past year, Shanghai introduced policies to support innovative development in a number of areas, such as automotive chips, synthetic biology, intelligent robots, and commercial aerospace.

Gong said Shanghai will in 2024 aim to further accelerate its bid to become a leading international center in terms of economy, finance, trade, shipping and technological innovation. The city will also implement a new round of business environment reforms featuring 150 measures.