One year after the release of the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Supporting the Pudong New Area in Building Itself into a Leading Area in Socialist Modernization through High-standard Reform and Opening-up, Shanghai released the Several Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Five Economy Types (hereinafter referred to as the “Document”) on July 15, 2022 to define the development direction of the innovation-driven economy, service economy, headquarters economy, open economy, and flux economy. The Document mentions, “the formation of an ecosystem of the five economy types with the focus on the service economy, high innovation capacity, highly concentrated headquarters, high-frequency flow aggregation, and deep integration into China and the world shall be accelerated.” It marks the first appearance of the wording “ecosystem of the five economy types”, which is quite innovative, after the concept “five economy types” was proposed in October 2020 and written in the reports on the work of the government in 2021 and 2022.

It should be recognized that sci-tech and industrial competitions have gone beyond technologies, products, and services, but have gradually evolved into system competition and ecosystem competition. From this perspective, the ecosystem of the five economy types is a response to this trend. Instead of a simple combination of five different types of economy, the five economy types are a complete ecosystem, which provides new possibilities for enterprise development and acts as a new base for empowering enterprise development, which is specifically embodied in the following five functions.

Firstly, a strong engine for innovation. Secondly, efficient interaction of the innovation chain, industry chain, capital chain, service chain, and governance chain. Thirdly, a high concentration of innovation elements (the key to the headquarters economy lies in the ability to rapidly aggregate high-level innovation elements such as multinational company headquarters, high-level R&D institutions, and professional talents). Fourthly, linking of domestic and foreign elements, production capacity, markets, platforms and rules. Fifthly, a high-level social transmission network to support high-quality innovation and sustainable development in the region.

The ecosystem of the five economy types provides a new approach to empowering enterprises’ technological innovation, element allocation, market expansion, external cooperation, cost control and management improvement. Such a reform exploration is valuable, especially under the current situation.