Morning of June 21
Speaker: Zhong Xiaomin, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce
Topic: Opening remarks
Shanghai has always placed the convention and exhibition industry in a priority development position and has achieved remarkable results in recent years. In 2017, Shanghai held 1,020 exhibitions of various types, with an exhibition area of 17.7 million square meters. In November this year, Shanghai will also welcome the first China International Import Expo. Preparations for the CIIE are being advanced with full effort.
First, exhibitor recruitment for the enterprise and business exhibition has exceeded expectations. As of yesterday, enterprises from more than 130 countries had signed contracts to participate, including more than 200 leading Fortune Global 500 companies. Second, buyer organization work has been fully launched, and more than 150,000 domestic and overseas buyers will participate. Third, the expo will provide value-added services to promote supply-demand matching and transactions. Fourth, preparations are being made solidly for the first Hongqiao International Economic and Trade Forum. The opening ceremony theme will be Stimulating New Vitality in Global Trade and Creating a New Pattern of Open Win-Win Cooperation. The three parallel forums will focus on trade and openness, trade and innovation, and trade and investment.
Shanghai is currently mobilizing citywide resources to advance urban support work. It will also use the opportunity of hosting the CIIE to continuously optimize the exhibition business environment and improve public service levels. The CIIE will bring a new round of opportunities for Shanghai's exhibition industry and continue to lead the process of building Shanghai into an international exhibition capital.
The development of Shanghai's exhibition industry should be based on a global perspective and draw on international experience. Over the past five years, the International Exhibition Industry CEO Shanghai Summit has continued to enhance its international influence and has become an important platform for dialogue and exchange between Shanghai and the international exhibition community, for discussing development, seeking partners and promoting the reorganization of exhibition factors. Over the past five years, domestic and overseas guests attending the summit have offered many valuable suggestions for the development of Shanghai's exhibition industry, and many have been transformed into innovative measures driving industry development. This summit will discuss the theme Belt and Road and the International Exhibition Industry. Zhong said he believed the insights of the participants would further promote Shanghai's building of an international exhibition capital.
Morning of June 21
Topic: Exhibition industry development with Chinese characteristics in the new era
Speaker: Xian Guoyi, director-general of the Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services, Ministry of Commerce
The convention and exhibition industry is an important platform for building a modern market system and an important component of an open economy. The Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of the exhibition industry. In March 2015, the State Council issued Several Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform and Development of the Exhibition Industry, clarifying the strategic goals for China's exhibition industry. In recent years, China's exhibition industry has made great progress.
First, China ranks first globally in exhibition venue area and exhibition scale. China now has more than 200 operating venues with indoor exhibition area above 5,000 square meters, and nearly 10 million square meters of available indoor exhibition area. In 2017, professional exhibition venues in China hosted more than 5,000 exhibitions with a total exhibition area exceeding 100 million square meters. Events such as Shanghai's international industrial automobile exhibition, Automechanika Shanghai, and bauma China have ranked among the top ten global trade exhibitions.
Second, China's exhibition industry structure by sector and organizer has further improved, and regional layout is becoming more clustered. The top four sectors by number of industry exhibitions are daily consumer goods and residential services, housing construction and decoration services, industrial technology, and culture, sports and entertainment. This structure is highly consistent with China's economic and social development structure. Market players are diversifying. Well-known international exhibition companies have organized exhibitions in China with global reputations, and some foreign-invested exhibition companies have also invested in and operated venues in China. Regional layout is becoming concentrated. The Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the three major exhibition economic belts, account for more than 60 percent of China's exhibitions. Other cities such as Chongqing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Qingdao are also accelerating exhibition development and gradually forming regional exhibition centers.
Third, the openness of China's exhibition industry is continuously increasing. In 2017, Chinese enterprises participated in and organized exhibitions in nearly 100 countries and regions, with exhibition area of nearly 1 million square meters. The government actively promotes the internationalization of Chinese exhibitions and targeted exchanges in trade, investment, science and technology with relevant countries. Exhibitions such as China-ASEAN, China-Arab States, China-Eurasia, China-Northeast Asia, China-South Asia, China-Central and Eastern Europe, China-Russia and China-Mongolia have all received strong support from governments of participating countries.
Fourth, China is continuously strengthening intellectual property protection for exhibitions. Measures for the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights at Exhibitions were issued early, requiring every exhibition to formulate an intellectual property protection plan, establish an intellectual property protection office, assign dedicated personnel and strengthen rights-protection support.
China's exhibition industry has enormous development potential and broad prospects. On the one hand, China is now the world's largest goods trading country, the second-largest services trading country, the second-largest consumer market and a major global manufacturing country. The exhibition industry will be an important platform for high-quality products and services worldwide to enter the Chinese market. On the other hand, China's exhibition infrastructure and conditions still need further improvement. In the future, China will closely follow the strategic positioning of the exhibition industry as an important platform for building a market economy system and an important part of open-economy development.
First, China will accelerate open development and carefully run the CIIE. Second, it will accelerate reform development and promote the marketization of the exhibition industry, allowing the market to play a better decisive role in allocating exhibition resources. It will continue streamlining administration and delegating power, while strengthening in-process and post-event supervision and services. It will promote exhibition standardization through intermediary organizations and industry associations, protect the rights and interests of exhibition market players, further strengthen intellectual property protection, reinforce the credit system and improve the legal and standardized level of the industry. Third, China will accelerate innovative development and promote efficiency, quality and driving-force changes in the exhibition industry. Exhibition themes should focus more on people's high-quality lives and high-quality economic development. Exhibition enterprises should widely apply emerging technologies such as the internet, big data, artificial intelligence, facial recognition, virtual reality and WeChat. Customs facilitation should be further advanced in entry and exit management. Reform and innovation should continuously improve the comprehensive benefits of China's exhibition industry, drive related industries such as accommodation, catering, information services, advertising, transportation and logistics, and improve the overall industrial ecology and economic and social benefits.
The International Exhibition Industry CEO Shanghai Summit is an excellent platform. Xian expressed hope that it would become not only a platform for cooperation and exchange between Shanghai's exhibition industry and the global exhibition industry, but also a platform for cooperation and exchange between China's exhibition industry and the global exhibition industry.
