Annual CIIE proving boon for local companies

While creating an advanced platform for multinational companies to make global or China debuts of their products and services, and further tap into China's vast market, the substantial spillover effect of the China International Import Expo will also help domestic companies explore business opportunities with global partners, said their executives on Thursday.

Given the broader participation this year, they said the CIIE reinforces the importance of interconnected global supply chains, and more "Chinese wisdom" is exported to the global marketplace and exerts influence around the world. These factors have encouraged a growing number of Chinese companies to participate in the grand event and form partnerships with foreign companies in attendance.

The expo has become a window for China to form a new development landscape, and a stage to promote high-level openness, said David Huang, founder, president and CEO of Yatsen Global Pte Ltd, or YSG, a Guangzhou-based beauty group and a second-time participant at the CIIE.

"The CIIE is not only important for us to showcase our products, but also plays a vital role to connect us with various parties in both domestic and global markets," Huang said, adding that the company's brand awareness and sales revenue have grown fast after presenting a number of Chinese and foreign beauty products at the fourth CIIE in 2021, and it will participate in the sixth CIIE next year.

As a multibrand platform, YSG will continue to take advantage of the spillover effect of the CIIE to discover new market opportunities and growth highlights, he added.

Feng Jianfeng, chairman of Chongqing-based OSell Group, a business-to-business, cross-border e-commerce platform, said the company found that the spillover effect of the CIIE has already generated positive results in more Chinese cities and businesses over the past few years.

Supported by its spillover effect and China's dual-circulation development paradigm, which takes the domestic market as a mainstay and lets domestic and foreign markets reinforce each other, the company hopes to form more partnerships by participating in the expo and taking digital trade as a channel to attract businesses' demand both at home and abroad, Feng said.

Digital trade refers to trade in goods and services being digitally ordered or delivered, which accounts for a growing share of international trade, according to the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

As a first-time participant to the CIIE, OSell debuted a self-developed metaverse-based product — Parallel Box — in a bid to create face-to-face business meeting scenarios for people in different parts of the world.

The Ministry of Commerce said that from 2018 to 2021, during the four previous editions of the CIIE, exhibitors from around the world launched more than 1,500 new products, technologies and services, with a total expected turnover exceeding $270 billion.

Driven by soaring demand of the world's air temperature control transportation market, Qingdao HB TempCon Aviation Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Qingdao, Shandong province-based home appliance manufacturer Haier Group, sealed a deal with foreign and domestic logistics providers, such as Europe-based CEVA Logistics and Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based J&T International Logistics, to jointly establish an industrial platform, at the fifth CIIE.

Meng Zhigang, general manager of Qingdao HB TempCon Aviation, said that air temperature control and transportation services cannot be achieved without the collaborative innovation of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.

"With the help of the CIIE, a platform of openness and exchange, we can further expand our market share and provide a variety of integrated logistics solutions to more clients," Meng said.