[Abstract] Shanghai boasts the best business environment and the highest internationalization degree of exhibition industry in China, and its exhibition industry exhibits outstanding performance in integrating domestic and foreign trade and equal national treatment of foreign-invested, private and state-owned enterprises. International exhibition projects have actually become the common pursuit of professional exhibition operators. However, severely hit by the three-year pandemic, Shanghai's professional exhibition operators, along with almost all international exhibition projects, have encountered unprecedented survival crisis. Based on a specialized survey of international professional exhibition operators in Shanghai, drawing on recent measures of domestic and foreign exhibition cities, and referring to previous research results on the exhibition industry, this research proposes that: The biggest bottleneck restricting Shanghai in bringing in international professional exhibition operators lies in market access restrictions, with administrative control being the fundamental restriction, pandemic impact being the main cause, and development of a "one-stop record-filing system" especially a municipal coordination and leadership system being the core breakthrough. Meanwhile, it is suggested to abolish the de facto "multi-head approval system".