Shanghai opens doors to financial world

Shanghai is a city in China with 70 million people, known as a touristic paradise. Chinese leaders want to turn the city into a globally competitive financial capital, this should be done by 2020.

Shanghai has come from a long way, twenty years ago Shanghai had no stock exchange and now their stock exchange is already bigger than the one of Hong Kong.

If Shanghai wants to compete with New York and London in the next decade, they will have to recruit Chinese and foreign money managers, lawyers, accountants etc… New York has 10 percent of its workers in financial services against 2 percent of Shanghai, because China’s largest banks have their headquarters in Beijing and not Shanghai.

The last ten years, Shanghai has added a lot of facilities to become a higher value and to get rid of the manufacturing and industry image.

To become a global financial center, China has to allow the renminbi to become a convertible international currency. There’s never been a world financial center without a freely flowing currency. The question is whether China will allow the renminbi to become a convertible international currency.

In my opinion it’s good that Shanghai opens doors to the financial world, it will create new jobs and help china, who’s in a booming economy, grow even faster. The jobs will be more dynamic and challenging than a job in a bank or a security house. But in order to rival with New York and London, China will have to make the renminbi, their currency, convertible.


Niels Steyaert
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/global/25iht-rshanfin.html?ref=asia