Foreign capital is an important part of China's economic development, and Shanghai has always been a hot spot for China to attract foreign investment. In the past 2018, there were 5,597 new foreign-funded projects in the city, a year-on-year increase of 41.7%; contractual foreign investment was 46.937 billion US dollars, up 16.8% year-on-year; the real foreign investment was 17.3 billion US dollars, up 1.7% year-on-year. The number of projects, contractual foreign investment, and real-time foreign investment have increased simultaneously.

In January 2019, there were 563 new foreign-funded projects in the city, a year-on-year increase of 69.1%. The contractual foreign investment exceeded US$10 billion, reaching US$10.97 billion, a year-on-year increase of 197.6%, and the actual foreign investment was US$1.422 billion, a year-on-year increase of 33.5%.

According to statistics, in January, Shanghai set up 552 new foreign service industry projects, real foreign investment of 1.284 billion US dollars, an increase of 24.8%, accounting for 90.3%. Among them, the business service industry actually reached 645 million US dollars, an increase of 66.5% year-on-year, accounting for 45.4%; the technology service industry actually reached 146 million US dollars, an increase of 263.8%, accounting for 10.3%. Other major investment areas are real estate (real foreign investment of 176 million US dollars, accounting for 12.4%), and commerce and trade (real foreign investment of 121 million US dollars, accounting for 8.5%).

The relevant person in charge of the Municipal Commerce Commission said that in 2019, they will adopt a fixed-site and fixed-time approach, continue to target Foreign-funded Enterprises, organize 12 round-table meetings on government-enterprise cooperation, and meet face-to-face with Foreign-funded Enterprises to understand the operation of Foreign-funded Enterprises.