Shanghai speeds up integration of business, sports to boost consumption

East China's metropolis Shanghai is leveraging professional trading platforms to facilitate the precise alignment between the development of sports intangible assets and market resources, fully unlocking the new momentum of sports consumption.

In a shopping mall located in Xuhui District, an amateur kickboxing competition was enthusiastically organized. Featuring a standard boxing ring, stunning lighting effects, and high-definition four-sided screens, drawing many spectators.

"It was quite interesting. It was right inside the shopping mall. Initially, we accompanied the child to participate in a competition held nearby. The boxing competition was very interesting, so we watched it together with the kid," said a resident.

Recently, Shanghai launched a seven-month sports consumption festival, featuring not only boxing matches but also basketball games and darts competitions. During the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday, in just the Xuhui commercial district, 16 sports events were held, with over 4,300 direct participants. These events collectively attracted 263,700 visitors, generating a turnover exceeding 10 million yuan (about 1.39 million U.S. dollars).

To efficiently connect the vast amount of sports event resources with multiple market entities, Shanghai, relying on the Shanghai Exchange Group, has launched the country's first sports resource trading platform to integrate public sports resources and encourage market participation.

This platform opens up event resources to commercial real estate, tourism platforms, financial institutions and other market entities, promoting negotiations and transactions between both sides. As a result, it allocates event traffic to market entities and helps event organizers find resource support, such as financial services, commercial facilities, and publicity and promotion.

"We will adopt various flexible trading methods. Starting from listing, we further leverage the professional and market-oriented service functions of our own platform to realize the value exploration of intangible assets and further release the spillover effect of the entire sports industry," explained Huang Ying, general manager of the public resources trading center at the Shanghai Exchange Group.

Shanghai speeds up integration of business, sports to boost consumption

The U.S. State Department announced Wednesday that it is pausing immigrant visa processing from 75 countries.

The measure will apply to "countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. The freeze will remain active until the U.S. can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people," the department said on X.

The pause impacts countries including Somalia, Haiti, Iran and Eritrea, "whose immigrants often become public charges on the United States upon arrival," said the State Department.

Earlier on Wednesday, the department announced in a memo that it would suspend visa processing for 75 countries, including Somalia, Russia, Afghanistan, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Thailand and Yemen, according to a Fox News report.

The pause will begin Jan. 21 and will continue indefinitely until the department conducts a reassessment of visa processing, the report said. The move came after the White House announced on Tuesday that it is ending temporary protected status for Somali immigrants amid fraud allegations in Minnesota.

On Monday, the State Department announced on social media that it had revoked over 100,000 visas since U.S. President Donald Trump took office nearly a year ago.

In November 2025, Trump announced his intention to permanently suspend immigration from what he described as "Third World countries", following the death of a National Guard member after being shot near the White House by an Afghan national.

U.S. freezes immigrant visa processing from 75 countries