The 130th China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), one of the largest trade fairs in the world to be held from October 15 to 19, will resume in-person exhibition in Guangzhou for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese commerce officials announced, marking another milestone in the country's fight against Covid-19 as all large-scale trade events and exhibitions have now resumed. With business opportunities rising despite challenges brought by the pandemic, this year's Canton Fair will feature both online and in-person showcases for the first time, providing a much-needed platform for businesses to pursue new orders and address issues across global supply chains, analysts noted. However, due to epidemic control and prevention measures, the Fair will be shortened to five days this year with the opening ceremony to be held on October 14, Vice Minister of Commerce Ren Hongbin told a press conference in Beijing.
The in-person exhibition will include 7,500 enterprises in an exhibition area covering 400,000 square meters, Chu Shijia, Director of the China Foreign Trade Center, told the press conference. The Fair will also have about 60,000 online exhibition booths for 26,000 domestic and international exhibitors. “In terms of scale, it remains the world's largest exhibition amid the pandemic,” Chu said. The resumption of the Canton Fair shows China is confident in containing the virus, Bai Ming, Deputy Director of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce's International Market Research Institute, told the Global Times. “From the China International Fair for Trade in Services held in Beijing, to the China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, we have established effective measures and ways of holding large exhibitions,” Bai said. Commenting on the impact of recent Covid-19 outbreaks and flare-ups in China, Zhang Xin, Vice Governor of Guangdong, said that contingency plans for the Canton Fair will require participants to provide proof of vaccination and a recent negative Covid-19 nucleic acid test to enter the venue.
The twice-a-year fair was held only virtually twice in 2020 and once earlier this year because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The theme of the Fair is “dual circulation”, a reference to China’s new development paradigm, in which the domestic market is the mainstay and the domestic and overseas markets reinforce each other. “The fair aims to attract more overseas buyers from online platforms to help foreign trade companies gain new orders,” Vice Minister Ren Hongbin said, adding that measures to resume offline exhibitions will boost the enthusiasm of domestic buyers and support export-oriented companies in further exploring growth points in the home market.
China's August trade figures registered a surprising uptick despite soaring international freight prices and port congestion. China's foreign trade reached USD530.3 billion in August, up 28.8% year-on-year and up 4.2% month-on-month. However, there are still many “uncertain, unstable and unbalanced factors” impacting foreign trade development, Vice Minister Ren said. “Affected by the new Delta variant, some countries once again have suspended production of a large number of intermediate products such as microchips, which has seriously disrupted the stability and smoothness of the global industrial chain and supply chain,” he added, as reported by the Global Times.
