The Yangtze River Delta region should further strengthen "soft links", including more seamless data flows and collaborative innovation platforms, so as to drive the area's high-quality development and better address the country's goal of building a unified national market, officials and experts said.

They made the comments during a forum on the YRD's integrated development held in Shanghai on Thursday. Now in its eighth consecutive edition, the forum released a total of 10 items to forge closer regional ties regarding government affairs, mutual recognition of medical examination results, nurturing of skilled talents, and cultural and tourism consumption activities, among others.

Meanwhile, the third batch of 12 YRD innovation consortia was announced, aiming to promote the coordinated development of new quality productive forces, including nuclear fusion energy, biomedicine, green fuels, integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, new materials, and new energy storage.

Basic research will be underscored in the YRD during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period to make it a world-level source for technology innovation, Chen Jining, Shanghai's Party secretary said during the forum.

To better attain this goal, the jointly built technology funds in the region should see their scale and efficiency improved while the various innovation consortia playing bigger roles. Large scientific and technology infrastructures will be opened to more users while scientific data should be shared and exchanged with higher efficiency, he said.

Cross-regional application scenarios should be explored to boost innovation. More international standards should be introduced jointly amid the construction of more industrial parks to advance the development of new quality productive forces, Chen said.

The free trade zones in the YRD will be supported to conduct stress tests concerning cross-border data flow and cross-border research and development, Xiao Weiming, deputy secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission, said.

Data should be supplied effectively and utilized better amid smoother flow so that the multiplier effect of data as a production factor can be amplified for the integration of the YRD, Liu Yingfeng, chief engineer of the Shanghai Data Bureau, said.

Therefore, efforts should be made to gather more innovation resources, achieve breakthroughs in major application scenarios, and pioneer regional standards, he said.

Sufficient capital supply is also crucial to the development of new quality productive forces. While a number of government-led venture capitals and market-based venture capitals have been founded in the YRD, their choices of targeted projects have become similar, which may lead to competition of market resources, Wang Jingbo, managing director of IDG Capital, said.

Therefore, Wang suggested the national asset platforms in the region should team up with the government funds and leading market institutions to jointly set up industrial funds, merger funds, and special funds, so as to focus on the key parts of the specific industrial chains or the strategic industries incurring higher cyclical volatility.

Rich talent supply is another advantage for the high-quality development of the YRD, as it is home to over 7,900 of the world's top scientists, higher than other similar regions in China, according to Ruan Qing, head of Shanghai Institute for Global City.

The YRD has seen the rise of "migratory" talents, with cross-city commuting surging by about 168 percent during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, according to Liu Fei, director of the public services division of the Hongqiao International Central Business District administrative committee.

Therefore, tighter transportation ties will be forged. A transportation connectivity action plan was unveiled at the forum. With 44 specific projects, the plan aims to accelerate the construction of a multi-level rail transit network, improve highway accessibility, and establish an integrated river-sea intermodal transport system.

In late 2024, State-owned enterprises from Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang jointly established an operating company for the regional rail networks around Shanghai.

According to the company's chairman, Xu Ganfeng, the high-quality integration of transportation is achieved via deeper innovation at the mechanism level, which means that the balance of powers, responsibilities, and interests in cross-jurisdictional governance should be reshaped.

Zhang Zhaoan, researcher at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said that the integration of the YRD is by no means "stitching physical spaces", but indeed the alignment of "soft rules" such as technical standards.

Shanghai's Party secretary Chen Jining said during the forum that the region will further strengthen the alignment of policy formulation, the consistency of regulations, and the coordination of enforcement.

On May 1, the YRD governments jointly released regulations on promoting the coordinated government affairs in the region, aiming to provide coordinated legislation for cross-regional government service collaboration, data sharing, process re-engineering, and standard unification.