Canton Fair another chance to strengthen ties with SA
CHINA’S time-honoured biannual trade fair, The China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), began its 131st session – online – on April 15.
The session, themed “Connecting Domestic and International Dual Circulations”, ran for 10 days until yesterday. Co-hosted by the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the People’s Government of Guangdong Province and organised by China Foreign Trade Centre, it is an all-inclusive international trading event with the longest history, largest scale, most complete exhibit variety, largest buyer’s attendance, broadest distribution of source countries of buyers and the biggest business turnover in China.
Since its establishment in the spring of 1957, Canton Fair has become China’s foremost trade event. Amid Coronavirus flare-ups around the world, the event has gone solely online – a new form of trade exchange first introduced in the 127th session in 2020 – which lowers costs for participants, reduces time and space limits and greatly facilitates exchange and communication.
The latest session includes online exhibitions, market match-making and cross-border e-commerce, and has attracted about 25500 domestic and overseas exhibitors. In a total of eight shows and 50 virtual exhibition halls, attending companies have uploaded over 2.9 million items, including 900 000 new products and more than 480 000 green and low-carbon exhibits, breaking all-time records.
South African purchasers and exhibitors can be freed from the hustle of travelling abroad while buying, inspecting, and selling commodities globally on the all-encompassing website of the fair.
The Communist Party of China (CCP) officially called the CPC Central Committee with President Xi Jinping at its core has highlighted that while the whole world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, taking into consideration the turbulent global political and economic conditions, “China’s economy has shifted from the stage of high-speed growth to the stage of high-quality development”.
The new development paradigm of “dual circulation”, in which domestic and overseas markets reinforce each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay, is thus a paramount strategic deployment in response to domestic and international risks and challenges.
In previous years, the proportion of South African buyers at the Fair was around 5%, and now the number is poised to grow steadily. The close co-operation between China and South Africa during the Canton Fair epitomises the amicable relations between the two countries.
Last year, the 8th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation was successfully held under the auspices of President Xi Jinping and President Cyril Ramaphosa, with fruitful results. Nowadays, with the rapid growth of economic and trade links between China and South Africa and the increased political willingness to further cement overall bilateral relations, more and more South African and Chinese enterprises are seeking to establish closer trade partnerships, which are spotlighted at the Canton Fair.
Chinese enterprises are taking the initiative to make themselves known to the world, providing African/South African partners with well-developed e-commerce technologies and trading channels, and expanding the content and scope of trade service co-operation between the two sides.
Many African/South African businesspeople have also shown a keen interest in live-streaming marketing.
Canton Fair serves as a window through which we can see that under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee with President Xi Jinping at its core, China is committed to connecting domestic and international dual circulations. This is being done with great confidence in promoting high-quality development and the fierce determination to constantly move toward all-round and higher-level expansion.