Shanghai’s Xuhui District Deep Analysis: How Did It Build a New High Ground for China’s Gaming Industry?

With the successful conclusion of the 2025 China Game Industry Annual Conference at the West Bund International Convention and Exhibition Center in Shanghai’s Xuhui Binjiang, the host district, Xuhui, has once again become the focus of national attention in the gaming industry. Data shows that in 2024, the gaming industry revenue in Xuhui District exceeded 70 billion RMB, accounting for nearly half of Shanghai’s total. The district has gathered over 70 leading and prominent gaming companies, including Tencent, NetEase, miHoYo, Lilith Games, Hypergryph, and Ubisoft, forming a golden industrial ecosystem characterized by “industry giants leading, emerging forces rising, and international players establishing a presence.” Evolving from a participant in the PC online game era to a leader in the mobile and globalization era today, Xuhui District has firmly established itself as the “heart” of Shanghai’s and even China’s gaming industry.

Industrial Agglomeration: “Twin Engines” Drive “Giants + New Forces” Gradient Development

The core momentum of Xuhui’s gaming industry stems from the “twin engines” formed by the West Bund and the Caohejing Development Zone. This area has not only attracted the regional headquarters of Tencent and NetEase and the global headquarters of miHoYo but has also nurtured a group of industry leaders like Lilith Games and Hypergryph. International companies such as Garena and Ubisoft have also established core R&D centers here. This agglomeration effect has not only produced global hits like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail but has also shaped the unique character of Shanghai’s gaming circle with a “content is king” R&D philosophy—emphasizing long-termism and creative quality, which stands in stark contrast to traffic-driven models.

Furthermore, Xuhui actively cultivates new industrial power. The “Caohejing Light of Hope Game Aggregation Base,” launched in 2025, has already attracted several innovative companies and is supported by an expert committee and the Shanghai Amazon Web Services Game Digital Empowerment Center. The incubation function inherent to leading companies (such as the incubators of Tencent and Hypergryph) and diverse entities like the IDG Capital-backed Lai San Laboratory collectively form a vibrant innovation incubation system, having cumulatively incubated over 80 teams.

Ecological Integration: Technology Empowerment and Offline Scene Expansion Broaden Industry Boundaries

Xuhui’s advantage extends far beyond just a concentration of companies. Its core competitiveness lies in constructing a fully integrated ecosystem encompassing “technology R&D – content production – scene consumption”:

Deep Integration of “Gaming + AI”: Boasting the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the nation’s first large model innovation ecosystem community “Model Space,” and over 700 large-model-related enterprises, Xuhui provides a powerful AI technology foundation for game development. AI capabilities are being applied in a lightweight, scenario-based manner across the entire industry chain, from content generation and efficiency improvement to gameplay innovation.

Offline Scene Innovation and IP Localization: The 1.9-kilometer-long “MetaWorld Neo World” metaverse street integrates the CADPA Game Museum, commercial green spaces, waterfront areas, and anime/IP landmarks (like the giant Sam mecha), perfectly blending industrial space with consumer space. Cultural landmarks such as the West Bund Art Center and Dream Center regularly host immersive exhibitions and trial play events for IPs like Valorant and Arknights, attracting over 500,000 offline visitors annually, successfully converting online traffic into offline “staying power.”

“Gaming+” Cross-border Linkages: Policies actively encourage cross-border integration of gaming with culture, tourism, commerce, education, healthcare, and other fields, supporting the creation of new themed consumption scenes to amplify the industry’s spillover effects.

Service Escort: Nationally Pioneered Professional Platform, Precise Policy Drip-Feeding

The key to Xuhui District’s continuous ability to attract and retain enterprises lies in its pioneering, “companion-style” business services that span the entire enterprise lifecycle.

Nation’s First Game Industry Service Center: Jointly operated by multiple departments including the District Culture and Tourism Bureau and Market Supervision Bureau, and linking over 30 agencies such as public security, procuratorate, judiciary, and talent bureaus, it has built an “8 Major Service Systems” covering policy, legal affairs, finance, publishing, and overseas expansion. Enterprise requests can achieve a “30-minute response,” with extremely high efficiency from registration to certification.

Continuously Strengthened Policy System: Following the district-level policy issued in March 2025 to promote high-quality development of the cultural and creative industry, Xuhui District is formulating more detailed Implementation Rules targeted at the game and esports industry, planning support from 8 major directions including enterprise agglomeration, R&D, distribution, technological innovation, and talent, with maximum single-item support funds reaching 30 million RMB. In October 2025, Shanghai’s first full-chain intellectual property protection center was inaugurated in Xuhui, and the nation’s first Network Game Enterprise Trade Secret Management Standards were officially released and implemented, providing robust protection for innovation.

Undertaking the Municipal Strategy “Shanghai Ten Measures for Games”: The upcoming municipal-level “Shanghai Ten Measures for Games” (with annual support funds of 50 million RMB) explicitly designates Xuhui (Caohejing and West Bund) as one of the core functional areas for building a world-class game and esports agglomeration zone. Xuhui District synchronized the release of its district-level supporting rules during the industry annual conference to ensure precise delivery of policy benefits to enterprises.

Future Outlook: Anchoring “Three Centers, One Platform,” Launching a New Three-Year Action Plan

Xuhui District has formulated a “Three-Year Action Plan” targeting 2026, focusing on three major directions for building the game industry high ground:

Ecological Momentum Aggregation: Consolidate the “giants + new forces” gradient pattern and continuously incubate emerging players.

Whole-Chain Empowerment: Deepen the functions of the Game Industry Service Center and improve upstream-downstream ecological collaboration.

Cross-border Integration: Strengthen AI technology对接, expand linkage scenarios between gaming and culture-tourism-commerce-sports-exhibitions, and utilize the high-quality spatial resources of the West Bund Binjiang to host more high-end industry events.

Conclusion

From the early days when Ubisoft trained talent and planted the seeds, through the Shanda and The9 era accumulating publishing experience, to Tencent’s arrival spurring an entrepreneurial wave, and ultimately ignited by the anime-style creative wave led by companies like miHoYo, Xuhui District has completed a clear industrial upgrade path over more than two decades. Today,凭借 its top-tier leading enterprise matrix, powerful AI technology empowerment, unique offline integrated ecology, and meticulous business services, Xuhui is not merely an industrial agglomeration zone but an innovative ecosystem capable of self-evolution and continuously producing works and IPs with global influence. As Chinese gaming pursues quality and globalization, the Xuhui model provides an extremely valuable reference for how cities can cultivate and develop high-value-added creative industries.