Focus on foreign investment pays off

Hong Chow, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals China, said Shanghai had been "a pioneer throughout China's reform and opening-up endeavor".

"The municipal government has built up a favorable business environment which is one of the most important factors for multinational companies like Roche to thrive," she said. "Shanghai's open, diverse and inclusive metropolitan culture is also attracting high-end talent from all over the world to contribute to the city's social and economic development."

The company expects the 863 million yuan Roche Innovation Center Shanghai to be completed in October. It will be Roche's third-largest strategic center globally, and will focus on drug discovery in infection-and immunology-related diseases.

"We are excited to continue our strong commitment and contribution to help Shanghai evolve into a world-class innovation hub," Chow said.

Shanghai rolled out the first batch of favorable policies to attract multinational companies' regional headquarters 17 years ago, and in the first seven months of this year, 26 set up regional headquarters in the city and nine others established regional R& D centers.

By the end of July, Shanghai had attracted 696 regional headquarters and 450 regional R & D centers.

Andrew Choy, EY's China international tax leader, said most of the multinational companies entering China in the 1980s and 1990s specialized in processing trade. But more service companies had come into the Chinese market since 2000.

Based on his experiences helping North and South American companies enter China, he said four out of five service-focused multinational companies would choose Shanghai as their regional headquarters.

But some multinational technology companies were asset-light and could not meet the municipal government's asset requirement for setting up a regional headquarters in Shanghai. That threshold had recently been lowered, in line with the path of industrial development globally, Choy said.

"More freedom is provided to multinational companies' regional headquarters in Shanghai and they can thus give full play to their capacity here," he said.