Shanghai's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.6 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2026 to reach nearly 2.79 trillion yuan (about 410 billion U.S. dollars), data released Monday by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics showed.
The Chinese financial hub's industrial resilience further strengthened to power the expansion in the January-June period.
On the supply side, industrial value-added output rose 5.6 percent compared with the same period last year, underscoring the manufacturing sector's ability to weather headwinds.
Strategic emerging industries outperformed the broader economy, with the total output climbing 7.7 percent year over year. Within that category, new energy vehicles surged 33.9 percent, the broader new energy 20.6 percent, and high-end equipment manufacturing 9.3 percent.
The city's three leading industries, integrated circuits, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence (AI), posted a combined output increase of 14.5 percent. Broken down, AI led the growth with a 21.8-percent jump, followed by integrated circuits at 19.5 percent and biomedicine at 7.2 percent.
"The growth rates of AI and integrated circuits have both surpassed 15 percent in the first half of this year. They respectively form the 'hardware' and 'software' foundations of the smart economy, providing the underlying infrastructure for the development of the wider smart economy," said Tang Yunyi, deputy director of the Institute of Applied Economics at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with China Media Group.
Shanghai's GDP grow 5.6 pct in Jan-June
