China International Import Expo (CIIE) opens in Shanghai
November 6, 2018 Category Foreign trade, Weekly
Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the opening of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai on November 5 and delivered a keynote speech. The Expo, which will close on November 10, welcomed 400,000 buyers from 3,600 companies in 172 countries and regions, and shows China’s determination to build a more balanced and open economy. Leaders from 18 countries, including Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Switzerland, Kenya and Cuba, also attended the Expo. A total of 82 countries and three international organizations have their own booth at the Expo. More than 100 new products and technologies debut and about 5,000 exhibits are shown in China for the first time.
At the opening ceremony, hosted by Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, President Xi Jinping called the CIIE an “innovation and historic event for global trade”. The Expo shows “China’s determination to promote free trade and support economic globalization”. “Countries need to explicitly oppose unilateralism and protectionism so we can build an open world economy. It is important for all countries to pursue innovative growth and speed up growth drivers. Only with innovation can we break the bottleneck of global growth,” Xi said. He called on the world to support new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and nano-technology, but warned that a winner-takes-all mentality is a dead-end in today’s world. He said that high-quality growth needed further opening up. China has a long-term strategy to buy more from the rest of the world and will cut import tariffs to make it easier. President Xi promised to open the healthcare and education sectors wider to foreign investment. He predicted that over the next 15 years the value of imported goods will reach USD30 trillion and imported services USD10 trillion. He also mentioned that China wants to speed up negotiations on a China-EU investment agreement.
President Xi admitted that China’s growth is facing growing uncertainties, but that China is taking active steps to solve these problems and “our efforts are already paying off”. He ended his 35-minute speech without mentioning Donald Trump and the trade war with the U.S. “The import expo is unprecedented in China for sure, and it really sends a signal to the global community that China is very open and willing to have imports, which is obviously very important in today’s environment,” said Mark Weinberger, Chairman and CEO of professional services firm EY.
The message that the Expo is sending to the world is that China is no longer purely the “Made in China” manufacturing powerhouse of recent years, but is now driven by consumers who want to buy what the world has to offer and that China is open for business as the country marks the 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up. The main goal of some of the participating foreign enterprises will be to get close to the Chinese middle-class consumer, whose growth in terms of numbers is set to be one of the global economic mega trends of the coming decades. According to global management consultants McKinsey & Co, the country’s middle class could increase to 630 million by 2022, almost double the current U.S. population of 327 million.
Mary Ma, General Secretary in Shanghai for leading independent think tank the Center for China and Globalization, believes the Expo can be compared with the Great Exhibition staged in London in the middle of the 19th century, and is a major opportunity for importers to showcase their products. “Many have said it provides a ‘6 plus 365 opportunity’ – you exhibit at the show for six days and then you can sell online for 365 days. Ma added that the purchasing power of younger people in China is something of a phenomenon. “The number of 20- to 30-year-olds in the shopping malls of Shanghai and Beijing is notable. This is a huge market and I am not sure if the foreign brands do their best to reach it, particularly online.”
The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China Shanghai Chapter said that the number of deals signed during the Expo would be of only symbolic value. The Chamber instead hoped the Chinese authorities would announce concrete reform measures to increase access to the Chinese market. Around 46% of European companies said they missed out on business opportunities in China because of regulatory hurdles and market access restrictions.
The Canton Fair, China’s oldest and largest trade fair, concluded its 124th biannual session last week with USD29.86 billion in transaction value, 1% lower than that of last year. 636 foreign firms from 34 countries and regions attended the Fair. The number of new buyers rose 2.34% from last year.
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