Shanghai is situated in East China, at the place where the Yangtze River and the Qiantang River converge into the sea, and that territory is part of the alluvial plain of the Yangtze Delta. Shanghai is not only the biggest city in China, the eighth biggest city in the world, and one of the four municipalities of China which is under the direct control of the Central Government. It’s also the best and most impressive city, or, in other words, it is the city in China that is most worthy of the title of municipality. Like Beijing, Shanghai is a place of the country which every person of the whole nation yearns for. Shanghai is above all a place held in high esteem by people all over the country.

The Municipality covers a total area of 7,037.50 square kilometers (ranking as the 31st by size among administrative regions of the provincial class). Of this total area, land accounts for 6,340 square kilometers (still expanding in construction work), waters account for 697 square kilometers, and the urban districts account for 289 square kilometers.

At present, there are more than twenty million people living and working in Shanghai and her adjoining areas. The city has a population of 18.5422 million (in the year 2007, i.e. the 25th by size among administrative regions of the provincial class of China). The population density is 3,154 persons per square kilometers (by 2008, or the 3rd among administrative regions of the provincial class of China). The urban population of Shanghai is 14,530,000 persons (by 2007, or the first among the cities of China). The natural growth rate of permanent residents of the Municipality is 3.04 0/00.

It has become the biggest economic center of today’s China and the largest trading port on the globe. The Shanghai harbor may now be considered the biggest harbor on the globe because it handles the largest volume of freight in the world. It may also be mentioned here that the urban area of Shanghai now has 6,000 high-rise buildings—three times the number in New York.
In the beginning of the 1990s, the Shanghai government launched a series of new strategies to attract foreign investments. The biggest move was to open up Pudong, once a rural area of Shanghai. The strategies succeeded, and now Pudong has become the financial district of Shanghai, with numerous skyscrapers.

Almost every Chinese knows that China cannot do without Shanghai, in the same way that the United States cannot dispense with New York. Today Shanghai’s goal is to develop into a world-class financial and economic center of China, and even Asia. In achieving this goal, Shanghai faces competition from Hong Kong, which has the advantage of a stronger legal system and greater banking and service expertise. Shanghai has stronger links to the Chinese interior and to the central government in addition to a stronger manufacturing and technology base. Since the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC, Shanghai has increased its role in finance, banking, and as a major destination for corporate headquarters, fueling demand for a highly educated and westernized workforce.