Barun Roy: A global showcase

ASIA FILE

After China's manufacturing juggernaut, get ready for its exhibitions' might.

It's history now, but until not too long ago the bi-annual Chinese Export Commodities Fair in Guangzhou (Canton) was the only window available to the outside world for a peek inside the Chinese economy. It was a big event that brought foreign businessmen in droves to Hong Kong to make their eagerly awaited trip to across the border every April and October.

It's still a big event. When the next "" 101st "" session of the fair opens on April 15, more than 150,000 kinds of Chinese-produced goods will be on display at the 190,000 square metre exhibition complex, continuing its position as the largest of all Chinese trade shows. Over 80,000 foreign business people are expected to attend and deals worth more than $16 billion are likely to be transacted.

And it still remains a mirror that reflects China's amazing economic growth. At the first session of the fair in 1957, no more than 12,000 kinds of commodities were on offer. Today, the range is twelve times bigger. Back then, the displayed items were 80 per cent agricultural. Today, they are 90 per cent industrial. Over the years, business at the fair has snowballed to more than $300 billion, and interest in the fair is so great that it has now been made a four-times-a-year event, with two sessions in April and two in October.

But the Guangzhou Fair is only part of the story. In the last decade or so, China has witnessed an enormous burgeoning of the entire trade fair business itself and this has meant more orders for the country, more foreign visitors, more hotel occupancy, and more of almost everything that follows when a country becomes a global showcase.

Last year, China held or hosted 3,800 trade fairs and its exhibition industry raked in $1.8 billion in profits. This year, the calendar seems equally full. At least 50 shows are slated for March alone, 29 for April, and 30 for May. The business is spreading so rapidly that foreign participants are often left with hard choices. For example, over 100 car exhibitions are held in China every year, including four in the northeastern city of Harbin. Over 5,000 trade visitors and 160 companies from 18 countries flocked to China's first ever photonics show in Shanghai. Last October, also in Shanghai, Music China drew over 200 exhibitors and 12,000 visitors from abroad. At last year's China Hi-Tech Fair in Shenzhen, the number of exhibitors tripled to 1,200 from 400 only a year before.

Quite expectedly, we are also witnessing a furious expansion of exhibition space. Currently, China has more than 120 exhibition centres of at least 10,000 sq m each. Some 80 new convention and exhibition centres are under construction while old facilities are being added to. Even in places away from the major exhibition cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, the infrastructure is state-of-the-art.

Guangzhou is a virtual exhibition city, complete with the fullest range of supporting infrastructure. The Guangzhou International Convention and Exhibition Centre in the Pazhou complex is a mammoth facility able to hold 10,200 international standard berths and having 91 lifts, more than 100 entrances and exits, and parking lots for 2,200 cars. Its Phase 2 expansion will make it bigger than even the exhibition centre in Hannover.

In Beijing, which already has 12 facilities dedicated to conventions and exhibitions, a new campus of the China International Exhibition Centre is being built in the Olympic Green to add 220,000 sq m of additional space and take the city's total available exhibition area to 400,000 sq m. But it's Shanghai, with 349 hostings last year, which is the driving force. A huge one-time expansion of facilities will result from the World Expo the city is going to hold in 2010, triggering activities throughout the eastern seaboard.

The expo site covers a 5.28 km area on both sides of the Huangpu River between the Nanpu and Lupu bridges. Relocation of people from the area is in full swing, the construction of the World Expo Village has begun, and land to parties to build their own pavilions will be given out in November. The 30-hectare Expo Village is designed to accommodate some 10,000 staff from participating countries and international organisations.

Officials expect 200 countries to participate in the Expo and around 70 million visitors from home and abroad to attend. Every effort is being made to ensure a smooth flow of traffic to and from the fair ground. The Huangpu River will have new bridge and tunnel crossings. Two new subway lines will be built specially with the fair in mind. Passenger handling capacities at both Shanghai Railway Station and Pudong International Airport will be expanded. Sixty new public transport transfer depots are to be built to streamline transfers between metro lines, buses, private cars, railways, and flights.

Planning couldn't be more holistic.