SHANGHAI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai will promote the development of regional headquarters of multinational corporations in the municipality, local authorities said Tuesday.

"Shanghai is home to more than 700 regional headquarters of multinational corporations, and it has long been the city with the most regional headquarters and foreign-funded research and development (R&D) centers of such enterprises in the Chinese mainland," said Yang Chao, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Committee of Commerce.

"The previous criteria for verifying regional headquarters of multinational corporations do not match the asset-light strategy of the companies. We hope to attract more regional headquarters to settle in the city and to expand their functions as well as speed up upgrading via the new policies," said Yang.

The requirement for the total assets of parent companies of regional headquarters has been adjusted to 200 million U.S. dollars, according to the policies.

To further facilitate R&D, Shanghai also plans to add renowned foreign trademarks that are vulnerable to infringement to the city's key protection list, so as to provide better intellectual property protection services for the regional headquarters.

In the first seven months of this year, 4,105 new foreign-funded projects were launched in Shanghai, up 58.3 percent over the same period in 2018.