SHANGHAI, March 29 -- A conference to attract global investment was held on Friday in Shanghai, with 21 key industrial chain projects worth a total of 52.4 billion yuan (7.4 billion U.S. dollars) concluded during the event.

These projects introduced to Shanghai involve not only the three leading industries of integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence, but also subdivision sectors such as new energy and energy storage equipment, and civil aviation.

At the Shanghai Global Investment Promotion Conference 2024, subdivision investment opportunities in 10 key industrial chain projects, including large-scale models, humanoid robots, metaverse, large cruise ships, commercial aerospace, new materials and hydrogen energy, were released.

A policy package was also unveiled at the conference, which includes reducing costs for enterprises by 100 billion yuan, adding 2 trillion yuan of investment and financing credit, and setting up 100 billion yuan of industrial investment funds.

Shanghai is an important window through which the world observes China. In 2023, the foreign direct investment in actual use in the city reached a record high of more than 24 billion U.S. dollars.

By the end of January this year, the number of regional headquarters of multinational companies and foreign-funded R&D centers in Shanghai had reached 962 and 563, respectively.