Global extravaganza set for Beijing

The world's biggest with all 12 sectors listed by World Trade Organization

The biggest gala for service traders worldwide is around the corner as the first China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services, also known as Beijing Fair, begins the countdown to its May 28 opening ceremony at the China International Convention Center in the capital city.

It will be the world's first trade fair to cover all 12 categories of services, said Zhou Liujun, the head of the service trade department at the Ministry of Commerce.

Services generally fall in 12 core sectors, according to World Trade Organization website information on the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

The sectors cover business, communications, construction and engineering, distribution, education, environmental protection, financial operations, health-related and social services, tourism, recreational, cultural and sporting services, transport and other services not included elsewhere.

The event, jointly organized by the Ministry of Commerce and the Beijing municipal government, runs through June 1.

Activities

Highlights include high-level forums, promotion and business talks, and theme day events.

Ten high-level forums are scheduled for the five-day event, with subjects ranging from cultural trade and business tourism in China to Sino-African trade in services and investment, as well as the WTO and China, according to the event's website.

"More than 40 professional symposiums are expected to be held for participants to exchange their views on key developments and trends of international trade in services," Zhou added.

Promotion and business talks are another important component of the fair.

Ninety events will be held on 27 topics in the 12 service sectors classified by the WTO.

In addition to common services such as tourism and engineering, more specialized fields such as outsourcing, digital publishing, culture and copyrights, as well as traditional Chinese medicine, will be covered.

Seven countries - Australia, Israel, Japan, Singapore, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, and the UK - and Africa will have theme days during the five-day event to showcase their service brands.

"Organizers will assist them by holding roundtables and inviting Chinese enterprises to participate," said Zhou.

Provinces and cities that have rapidly developing service industries such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, as well as some State-owned enterprises, will also hold theme day events.

Exhibitions at the fair are expected to cover a total of 40,000 square meters.

Apart from the main exhibition, it will have sections for mainland provinces and cities, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, foreign countries and multinationals.

Some government departments, including the Ministry of Commerce, the General Administration of Sport of China, and the General Administration of Press and Publication, are scheduled to release industry policies at the fair.

Development

The fair, formerly known as the China Trade in Services Congress, was a biennial event first held in 2007.

Trade in services has become a more prominent part of international economic cooperation as China ranks the third among service importers and the fourth among service exporters worldwide.

The Chinese government has scaled up the planned proportion of the service industry's contribution to the country's GDP from 43 percent to 47 percent in the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015).

Against that backdrop, the two organizers, the Ministry of Commerce and the Beijing municipal government, plan to make the fair an annual event running from May 28 through June 1 in Beijing.

In addition to 16 ministries and departments under the State Council, the fair's permanent sponsors are the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Why Beijing?

Zhou from the Ministry of Commerce said Beijing was chosen as the permanent host city because it leads the nation in service and service trade industries.

In 2011, the service industry generated 75.7 percent of the GDP in Beijing, well above the national average of 43 percent.

The city's 2011 trade in services hit $89.5 billion, with both imports and exports accounting for over 20 percent of the country's total.

Beijing is also expected to fuel the fair's popularity with its increasingly sound infrastructure for trade in services.

The Beijing Equity Exchange, the largest of its kind in the country, saw a total trading volume of 453.62 billion yuan in 2011, a 103.67-percent leap from the previous year.

The International Copyright Exchange recently won the title of National Copyright Trading Base, bringing the total number of such centers to three in the city.

The markets will create more favorable conditions for China to build professional platforms for trade in services, said Zhou.

With joint efforts, the globally oriented fair is expected to help promote balanced, steady economic development in China and the world as a whole, he added.

Contact the writers at wangsujuan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/25/2012 page17)