CHINA: 121st Session Of The Canton Fair

The concluding press conference of the 121st session of theCanton Fair was held in the Canton Fair Complex on May 5. Xu Bing, Spokesperson of the Canton Fair and Deputy Director General of China ForeignTrade Centre introduced the general situation of this session.

Xu pointed out that the 121st session is a critical sessionimplementing the outlines of President Xi’s congratulatory letter and PremierLi’s instructions, thus it is of great significance of continuing the past andbreaking new ground for the future.

With theattention and care of the central government, the State Council, with the support and the leadership of the Ministry of Commerce, Guangdong Province and Guangzhou municipal government, we stood firm in implementing the newdevelopment concepts, deepening reform and innovation and giving full play to Canton Fair’s platform of opening China up.

We’ve strived for specialization,information technology application, market orientation and internationalapproach of the Canton Fair, promoted upgrading and optimization of the foreigntrade mix and boosted the development of China’s open economy.

With theconcerted efforts of our staff, the 121st Canton Fair went onsmoothly and we reached our goals.

Xu said that the number and quality of overseas buyers both increasedthis session. Buyer attendance totaled 196,490 from 213 countries (regions), upby 5.87% over the 119th session.

In terms of buyer attendance of all continentsin descending order, the number of buyers from Asia totaled 112,314, taking up 57.16%of the total; Europe 32,664, accounting for 16.62%; Americas 29,998, accounting for 15.27%; Africa 15,085 with 7.68% share, and Oceania 6,429 with 3.27% share.

Compared with the 119th session, buyer attendance from Asia increased by 5.5%, from Europe increased by 4.97%,Americas up by 9.6%, Africa up by 3.72%, and Oceania up by 5.36%.

The number ofbuyers from countries in the “Belt and Road Initiative” stood at 88,574, up by8.55%.

Buyer attendanceof the top 20 countries and regions accounted for 61.59% of the total, roughlythe same share compared with the 119th session. The top 10 countriesand regions in terms of buyer attendance are Hong Kong, the United States,India, Taiwan Province, Thailand, South Korea, Russia, Malaysia, Australia, andJapan.

Buyer attendancefrom China’s top 10 trading partner countries and regions accounted for 58.49%of the total, roughly the same level compared with the 119th level.

Altogether 1,119 international chain companies attended the Fair. 109 out of the Top 250 GlobalRetailers in 2017 attended the Fair, 17 more than the 119th session.Among them there were 6 of the Top 10 retailers: Wal-Mart, Walgreen, Carrefour,Aldi, Tesco, and Amazon.

Regular buyerswith more than 10 times’ attendance totaled 48,914, up by 1.61%; buyers withmore than 15 times’ attendance 35,502, up by 4.45%.

Buyer attendance proportion in terms of their business line is: (top five) electronics andhousehold electrical appliances accounting for 40.02% of the total, dailyconsumer goods 31.86%, home decorations 28.95%, gifts 28.1%,and textile and garment 25.49%.

Xu mentionedthat this session witnesses stabilizing growth of the export transaction. The accumulatedexport transaction of this session totaled 206.357 billion RMB Yuan (or 30.02billion US dollars), an increase of 6.9 % over the 119th session.

The transaction volume in brand zone reached 10.9 billion US dollars, an increaseof 16.9% over the 119th session, accounting for 36.3% of the total;the transaction with the “Belt and Road” countries totaled 9.01 billion dollars, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%. Of all orders, 45% are short-termorders within 3 months, 35.9% are mid-term orders covering 3-6 months and 19.1%are long-term orders over 6 months.

Xu said that inthis session, structural reform on the supply side of foreign trade wasadvanced. Exhibitors stepped up their product design and research investment,developed new source of growth in the foreign trade development, moved to the higher end of the value chain and formed new advantage based on technology,brand, quality, and service.

Also they led innovation with strengthened R&D, and presented more products that have high technological content, high added value, and products that are smart, green and low-carbon, showing to theworld the technological and innovative capacity of Chinese companies and China’s smart manufacturing ability.

These products at the Canton Fair were verypopular among buyers. Exhibitors were very active in implementing branding strategy; they established brand design and marketing center, engaged in the registration and protection of their trademarks and patents in other countries and witnessed stabilizing growth of export turnover in products with their own brands.

Moreover, they also referred to advanced international qualitystandards, passed globally-recognized product test and acquired green and safety certification, accelerating their strategy of globalization.

They focused on improving after-sale service as an important means to explore internationalmarket, and expanded their serve range, improved service quality and efficiencyand perfected service support system. By using Internet plus and big data theyenhanced their service capacity and customer satisfaction.

Xu pointed out that in the new era Canton Fair has expanded new functions and made a betteruse of domestic and international markets and resources; it has become acomprehensive service platform with export transaction at its core andmulti-functions such as customer networking, display and negotiation,industrial communication, information release, product introduction and brand promotion.

Firstly, important plat form to increase export. Canton Fair serves as an important platform for exportas the total transaction volume each year stands at 60 billion USD. According to our survey, the transaction volume exhibitors achieved with customers met atthe Canton Fair accounted for 23.7% of their annual export volume on average;79.9% of Canton Fair transactions were made after the Fair and this number ison the rise.

Secondly, enhanced ability in leading design and innovation. Through design display, design match making and Canton Fair Design Awards, Canton Fair has been leading andencouraging exhibitors to enhance their product design and innovation capacity.

In this session 97 design agencies were consulted 20,000 times on design service, 40.53% of which are projects to follow up.

This shows enthusiastic bridging between exhibitors and design agencies and significant results ofdisplay. During global marketing summit and promotion conference for smar tMade-in-China, the demand for sourcing stood strong, indicating an innovativemodel for industrial matchmaking.

Canton Fair Design Awards has served as anengine for exhibitors to spur product innovation and establish their brands as the winning products enjoyed brisk transaction.

Thirdly, enhanced import function. In this session, the International Pavilion introduced industrial products with high technological content and high-end brands and consumer products that met the demand of the Chinese market.

Machinery and electrical industrial leaders from the US and Japan,household appliances brands from the “Belt and Road” countries, and consumer brands from Germany, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, India and Turkey all enjoyed excellent results such as receiving big orders, signing cooperation agreement, reaching cooperation intent, working with Chinese partners on production, and connecting with overseas buyers.

Fourthly, an important channel for meeting customers. During this session, the number of new buyers amounted to 80,397, a year-on-year increase of 7.29%. Our survey shows that exhibitors with the purpose of meeting new customers and buyers hoping to find new suppliers and products accounted for94.6% and 78.7% respectively.

Fifthly,promoted industrial exchange. In this session we held 27 conferences and forums, with the themes covering industrial summit, brand marketing, trend,R&D, company management, etc. These forums were welcomed by exhibitors,helped them explore markets, strengthen brands, boost foreign trade advantage,and provided a platform of opening up for local sectors and economy.

Exhibitors mentioned that forums broadened their horizon and brought insight for the future planning of their companies.

Sixthly,an important venue for new products and brand promotion. Many exhibitors brought new products to the Fair and some witnessed a new product update rate of 80%. Brand booths took up 20% of the total, and transaction volume accounting for 36.3%, indicating Canton Fair’s role in guiding brand development.

We held promotion activities for local sectors of Heilongjiang Province, Liaoning Province and Chengdu City as well as trade matchmaking activities in various forms. 38 display activities for exhibitors and brands were staged, providing image presentation, brand promotion, product demonstration for exhibitors to attract buyers.

Xu Bing also introduced that in this session we relied on Canton Fair official website,exhibitors and products search system, highlight products column, global social media, Best platform, smart security system to make new ways in Canton Fair marketing, smart management and convenient service.

We’ve continued to improve the official website, exhibitors and products search system, highlight products column, and customers’ attention, with visits to all these increased.

Xu mentioned that we’ve also driven green move-in in this session and strengthened elimination mechanism for construction companies of custom-built booths.We’ve standardized management of simplified decoration of standard booths, and stepped up onsite monitoring, inspection and approval for better evaluation of Canton Fair Green Development Plan.

With the concerted efforts of trading delegation,chambers of commerce, exhibitors, construction companies of custom-built booths and China Foreign Trade Centre, we’ve made positive results in making green move-in a permanent mechanism. The 100% green booth coverage rate has been achieved in this session.

The display result of green booths has been further improved; 2941 green custom-built booths applied for the related award.

CantonFair is China’s first exhibition to propose, practice and implement green development, providing a fresh example of green and low-carbon development for the Chinese exhibition industry.

Xu stated that in this session, the Canton Fair Complaint Station handled 476 IPR cases, with 595 exhibitors filed and 315 determined as constituting alleged infringement.

Compared with the previous session, the number of cases handled decreased by 16.05%,the number of filed enterprises decreased by 2.46%, and the number of alleged infringement down by 4.83%. The Station also dealt with 25 trade disputes, 11 less than the last session.

The significant drop in the number of cases, filed companies and IPR infringement companies demonstrated that exhibitors’awareness of IPR protection was enhanced and IPR protection at the Canton Fair has yielded great results.

Also in this session, China Foreign Trade Centre and Guangdong Intellectual Property Office signed “Strategic Partnership on IPR Protection at the Canton Fair” to explore new models of IPR protection and do a better job protecting IPR in a larger scope and higher level.

CHINA: Chinese Tourists Conned Into Forced Shopping Tours, Served With Food From Expired Ingredients

Man makes three attempts to kick off top 30cm of limestone feature in act of senseless vandalism.

It takes nature hundreds of thousands of years to create limestone stalagmites in scenic caves, but only a few seconds for a badly behaved tourist to damage them.

Such was the case in southwest China when a young man deliberately destroyed a 50cm stalagmite at a cave in Songtao county, Guizhou province, adding yet another entry to the list of Chinese tourists’ obnoxious behaviour.

Surveillance cameras caught the white-shirted man trying to kick off the stalagmite on the side of the main path in the cave, while other tourists were taking photos of the natural marvels.

He made three attempts to eventually knock off a 30cm-long tip and then walked away without taking it, the footage showed.

The scenic attraction’s administrators contacted local police, but the man has not yet been found.

Cave enthusiast Wang Dayong said that it takes an excruciatingly long time, many thousands years for a stalagmite to form from the ground up, drip by drip, or stalactites, which form downwards from cave ceilings, and they can hardly be restored.

Similar stalactite damage has also been reported in Shandong and Liaoning provinces.

This is a deliberate action, an internet user commented. We should have a black list to prevent badly-behaved tourists from entering similar scenic spots.

Lawyer Chen Hao said such vandalism should be denounced. He suggested that the cave’s administration have the broken stalagmite appraised at a laboratory.

Police will detain the man if the appraisal value is above the threshold of criminal charge. If not, the administration office can sue the man for compensation, Chen said.

Tourists in tour groups can be abandoned by the side of the road if they don’t leave tour bus to help guides earn commission in stores.

Chinese tourists taking part in tour groups in Thailand and Vietnam are often abandoned by the roadside if they refuse to shop for overpriced goods in designated stores, a major way for guides to earn cash, according to an investigation conducted by Chinese state media.

In one case more than 20 tourists from Inner Mongolia were left by the roadside in Thailand after they refused to pay for a 1,800 yuan (US$260) shopping programme as part of their tour earlier this month.

Tourists who refused to shop at set stores in Vietnam can also be left off the tour bus, or their windows are forcibly shut and the air conditioning turned off, the report said.

Tourists usually have to get off the bus and visit stores as a result, they were quoted as saying.

Most guides for Chinese tour groups in Vietnam and Thailand are Chinese because of the lack of local guides who speak Putonghua, industry insiders said.

One common practice in Thailand is for Chinese travel agencies to attract tourists by offering extremely low priced or “zero dollar” tours and to sell on the tour group to local agencies in Thailand.

The Thai agencies then “sell” the tourists to tour guides for 1,000 yuan per head. The guides have to rely on commission from stores visited to cover the tour costs, industry insiders said.

Chinese made over 8.7 million trips to Thailand last year and 7.9 million in 2015.

As cutthroat competition reduces profit margins for budget tours almost to zero, travel agents are turning more to commissions from shops for income.

A growing number of Chinese tourists on low-cost group trips to Japan and South Korea have been greeted with forced shopping and meals cooked with expired ingredients, according to mainland and local media.

The problem has cast a shadow over the tourism boom in both Asian countries prompted by holidaymakers from their neighbour.

It is particularly severe in South Korea where five-day tours can cost as little as 2,000 yuan (HK$2,400) – but whose itineraries mostly include visits to shopping centres arranged by the travel agency.

Experts have warned that if the authorities do not provided better scrutiny of tour operators, South Korea and Japan may follow Hong Kong which saw its number of mainland visitors slump following poor travel experiences.

Chinese tourists have spent millions of yuan on holidays to Japan and South Korea, which pipped Hong Kong as the most popular travel destination for mainlanders last year.

A traveller named Wang said she was pressed into shopping all day at a drab outlet mall in Daegu during a group tour to Seoul and Jeju.

Her all-inclusive 2,499- yuan package tour included visits to eight shopping centres in five days.

Many of the tourists who sign up for low-budget tours to South Korea are professional “shopping agents” whose sole purpose is to buy goods overseas on behalf of their clients, an tour leader said.

Korean media also found that Korean restaurants serving only Chinese travellers used expired ingredients in their guests’ meals .

Intensifying low-cost competition has squeezed profit margins for Chinese travel agents to almost zero, making commissions from the shops their main source of revenue.

The tourists would be asked to spend enough time at the shopping outlets in order to comply with terms in the contract, a tour leader familiar with the business said.

The South Korean government in March revoked the licenses of 68 travel agents targeting Chinese tourists in an crackdown on malpractices in the country’s flourishing tourism industry, but industry experts believe more should be done at the source in the mainland.

CHINA: Sanya, Shanghai Any Destination In China Depend On Your Country Of Origin

Whether you end up in Sanya, Shanghai or another destination in China seems to depend partly on what country you come from.

How do you choose your favourite spot in China when there is just so many to choose from? Ardi Pulaj is well acquainted with the problem.

You just have to give up trying.

Mr Pulaj can run off a list of about 30 places stretched across the country that he has visited, many of which he now regards with close affection.

China offers so many options for travelling, and each of them is unique in what it has to offer, A Beijing reident says.

There are so many places that can be considered favourites, such as Sanya (Hainan province), Dalian (Liaoning province) and Shanghai.”

In Sanya it was the weather and beaches that took his fancy because, he said, they allowed him to get away from the fast pace of big-city life.

Dalian made it to his shortlist because of its pleasant character, cleanliness and the fact that this city on the coast offers respite from the kind of hot summer weather you get in Beijing.

For him, Shanghai is also admirable, “a convenient city with the true spirit of a metropolis”.

At a tourism industry conference in Kunming, Yunnan province, in November, Gold Palm, a tourism consulting service in Shanghai, unveiled a list of 10 Chinese tourism destinations popular with visitors from outside the mainland.

Gold Palm said it discerned a clear difference in favourite destinations named as a product of where tourists came from.

For example, while many American visitors had Chengdu and Jiuzhaigou, both in Sichuan province, at the top of the list of their favourite destinations in China, Japanese opted for Shanghai and Beijing, South Koreans plumped for Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, and Thais had a soft spot for the ancient city of Fenghuang, also in Hunan.

Those from the US favour places offering leisure, while spots featuring unusual and even challenging landscape appeal to tourists from South Korea, said the executive director of Gold Palm, Liu Dan. Zhangjiajie, Huangshan, Fenghuang and Hangzhou appeal to South Koreans because of the scenery, he said.

“A laid-back lifestyle and distinctive cuisine — and pandas — make Sichuan highly attractive to Americans.”

The Japanese like urban scenic spots and Europeans look for culture, which takes them to places such as Leshan in Sichuan and Xi’an in Shaanxi province for ancient historical heritage, Mr Liu said.

About 128 million tourists from outside the mainland flocked to such attractions last year, comprising 26 million foreign tourists and the rest being from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Inbound tourism grew seven per cent in the first 10 months of this year compared with the corresponding period last year, Mr Liu said, adding that the number of such tourists is expected to reach 130 million this year, thanks to increasing numbers of tourists from Japan and South Korea.

The number of South Korean tourists to the mainland rose 48 per cent this year, compared with the corresponding period last year.

Beijing alone drew in more than 300,000 visitors from South Korea in the first nine months of this year. South Korea was the top source country, followed by Japan, with 190,000.

Last year, more than 828,000 Japanese tourists visited Shanghai, accounting for 10 per cent of all inbound tourists to the mainland, Mr Liu said.

Cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an remain the all-time favourites among foreign tourists, said Yu Liangbing, deputy general manager of China Youth Travel Service Co in Beijing.

But areas with attractive scenery are luring more visitors thanks to word of mouth and the impact of movies. Mr Yu attributed the popularity of Zhangjiajie partly to the film Avatar, some of which were shot there. Yichang is popular because of the Three Gorges Dam spanning the Yangtze River, he said.

The route from the upper reaches of the Yangtze, starting from Chengdu or Chongqing across Jiangxi and Hubei provinces to Shanghai is one of the most popular among inbound tourists.

Silk Road- themed trips featuring Xi’an and going all the way to Dunhuang in Gansu province, or journeys tracking the Grand Canal from Beijing across Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu and Zhejiang to Shanghai are also becoming more popular, he said.

One of the agency’s most popular tours is an eight-day trip that takes in Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai, costing about $1,000 (£650).

“Some tourists have begun to warm up to places in north-western China, such as the Xinjiang Uygur and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions,” Mr Yu said.

His company arranged for 40 American tourists to drive themselves from Sichuan to the Tibet autonomous region this summer.

More tourists from the US are expected to visit the mainland as the China-US Year of Tourism is launched next year, he said.

Mr Pulaj advised would-be tourists to the mainland never to travel during national holidays because, he said, there are so many people on the move it is impossible to have an enjoyable time.

He had recently seen “gorgeous” photos of scenery in Tibet, and hoped to visit it soon, he said. He is also keen to visit Yunnan where, he said, places such as Lijiang, Dali and Shangri-la give “the perfect sense of natural beauty”.