The Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress on Thursday announced the guidelines regarding the promotion of the exhibition industry.

The guidelines, which aim to transform the city into a global hub for exhibitions, are the first of their kind in the exhibition sector in China and are geared toward improving service quality and efficiency and offering supportive measures.

According to the guidelines, Shanghai will seek to attract international exhibition enterprises to set up their headquarters in the city as well as build a market for large-scale exhibitions with global competitiveness.

Shanghai has up to 1 million square meters of professional exhibition space as of 2018. That same year, it held 1,032 exhibitions, up 61 percent from 2010.