253,000 overseas buyers visit Canton Fair
More than half of orders come from countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative
Foreigners who visited the China Import and Export Fair held in Guangzhou on the 4th are listening to product explanations. /Xinhua Yonhap News
At trade fairs that can gauge the aspects of China’s foreign trade, it was found that the proportion of customers from the United States and Europe decreased, and the proportion of countries along the Belt and Road (land and maritime Silk Road) such as the Middle East and Central Asia increased.
According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) on the 8th, 253,000 overseas buyers visited the 136th China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), which closed on the 4th, and signed contracts worth $24.95 billion (about 34.5956 trillion won). concluded. More than half of the orders came from countries participating in the Belt and Road, including the Middle East and Central Asia.
Canton Fair is China’s largest trade fair held in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. It is held every year for three weeks in April-May and October-November. It is called a measure of China’s foreign trade.
This fall’s Canton Fair saw a 2.8% increase in overseas visitors and a 1% increase in contract value compared to last spring’s fair. Contract performance falls short of the visitor growth rate. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 186,000 people visited the fall fair in 2019 and signed contracts worth $29.3 billion (about 40.6391 trillion won).
SCMP cited the decline in buyers in North America and Europe as the reason for the slowdown in performance. Among foreigners who visited the Canton Fair in the first week of October, 18.1% were from North America and Europe, and 69.7% were from Belt and Road countries. Last April, buyers from North America and Europe accounted for 20%, and buyers from Belt and Road countries accounted for 65%.
Ahead of the U.S. presidential election, customs disputes following the return of former President Donald Trump and a significant increase in air transportation costs due to the inability to use Russian airspace due to the war in Ukraine are cited as reasons for the decrease in buyers from North America and Europe. Feng Biao, a textile and clothing supply chain expert, said, “Many of the emerging market participants who visited the expo collected product samples but did not actually purchase them. “The purchasing power is not yet known,” he told SCMP.
China is focusing its efforts on emerging markets to prepare for conflict with the West. According to a report from Deloitte and WorldFirst last August, China showed an average annual export growth rate of around 10% in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Middle East, and Latin America from 2018 to 2023. The growth rate of exports to Saudi Arabia averaged 19.7% per year. On the other hand, exports to the EU and the US grew by only 4.2% and 0.9%, respectively.
It is not enough for emerging markets to replace the North American and European markets. Moreover, signs of conflict are rising as cheap Chinese products are flooding into emerging markets. A clear example is that Indonesia blocked the Chinese shopping app Temu. African countries’ trade deficit with China was also discussed at the China-Africa Cooperation Forum held in Beijing in September.
Chinese state-run media, including Xinhua News Agency, are reporting news about the Shanghai International Import Expo, which opened on the 5th, and emphasizing that China has a high capacity to import products from developing countries, especially agricultural products.
