Canton Fair expects big offline rebound

Trade expo spreads over 1.5 million sq m, houses some 35,000 exhibitors

The 133rd China Import and Export Fair, the country's largest trade event that is scheduled to open with a grand ceremony on Friday, will see vendors and buyers from across the globe. The fair is expected to contribute significantly to the recovery and growth of the Chinese economy as well as the global economy, experts and industry insiders said.

Running through May 5, the event, also known as the Canton Fair, will resume all on-site activities in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, after being held largely online since 2020 due to COVID-19 response measures, said Xu Bing, spokesman of the fair, adding that online services will also be in place on a sustained basis.

Xu said that to date, buyers from 226 countries and regions in both developed and emerging markets have registered for both offline and online exhibitions.

And 53 leading multinationals, including US firm Walmart, French retailer Auchan, German discounter Lidl and Abu Dhabi-headquartered supermarket chain Lulu, have confirmed they will attend the fair, Xu said.

Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the China Association of Policy Science's Economic Policy Commission in Beijing, said the Canton Fair is well positioned to serve as an accurate matchmaking platform for suppliers and buyers across sectors, and this can help boost global trade in goods.

The Canton Fair also helps Chinese companies to further explore international markets and beef up the country's foreign trade. The economic recovery and growth of China, a reliable partner on both supply and demand sides, will in turn facilitate a quicker global revival, he said.

According to the latest analysis of the International Monetary Fund, China is projected to give a significant boost to the world economy, accounting for about a third of global growth this year.

Xu, the fair's spokesman, said this year's event has achieved the largest scale since its history began in 1957, in terms of both the venue acreage and the number of global participants.

Xu said the exhibition area will be expanded from 1.18 million square meters to 1.5 million sq m this year to house nearly 70,000 booths for import and export companies.

To better meet the evolving needs of the global market and consumer demand, the trade fair will roll out new exhibition sections featuring smart manufacturing, new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, maternal and infant products and the "silver-haired" economy that caters to senior citizens, he said.

Thanks to the expansion of the exhibition area and introduction of new themes, as many as 34,933 exhibitors will fill the offline exhibitions, 9,000 of whom are first-timers to the fair, he said.

On top of this, 39,281 firms will take part in the trade fair through online channels. Over 3 million products will launch at the online exhibitions, including nearly 800,000 novel products and 500,000 green low-carbon products, he said.

China's private businesses take the lion's share among the exhibitors, accounting for 90.1 percent of the total, Xu said, adding that of these, about 5,700 are leading manufacturing and high-tech enterprises.

Midea Group, a leading Chinese appliance maker based in Foshan, Guangdong province, will arrange an exhibition booth of over 750 sq m, to display its cutting-edge technologies and intelligent, high-quality, low-carbon products.

"Resumption of the physical exhibition, after three years of the global COVID-19 pandemic, is of great significance to the company's further sales expansion in overseas markets," said Liu Xin, director of Midea's sales in the European region.

Overseas markets contributed over 40 percent of Midea's total sales revenue in the past two years, the company said.

Galanz Group, a Chinese appliance maker that is also based in Foshan, will introduce its new products, including microwave ovens for cooking premade dishes and health appliances that use aerospace technology.

"We will focus on the introduction of our full range of health appliances, of which some have been used in space stations. We believe that these products will be favored by customers," said Zhang Ding, an overseas sales manager of Galanz.