Will Shanghai be a world capital? Only 5 metropolises are world capitals. New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt and Tokyo.
Tokyo is loosing ground and the prospects of Japan are doomed. China will take over. Already has. But is takes time to shift power markets and neither Beijing nor Shanghai have yet overpassed Tokyo. They will.
The issue is which of the two Chinese cities will be the economic leading capital. Shanghai looks like the economic force but we must not forget that China is a centralized country and not only within the single-party communist regime, but throughout history. The Imperial system, based on Lao-Tzu and Kong-Fu philosophical approaches are rather more into the Roman Law Neo-Platonism system than the Common Law Empirical one. In that philosophical/Governance system political and economic power are territorially linked rather than delocated.
This feature will concentrate in Beijing political and economic power.
Never the less Shanghai has to play its cards, and Shanghai cannot play its cards if it doesn't’t have a good hand. A decongested metropolis is a must, and a Metro-Matrix approach the requirement fro Shanghai to perform and meet its future.