Expo gives boost to Hainan as int'l tourism consumption center

HAIKOU -- The first China International Consumer Products Expo, to be held from May 7 to 10 in South China's Hainan province, will inject new impetus into the building of the island province into an international tourism consumption center.

The four-day expo, which focuses on high-end consumer products, has attracted the participation of more than 1,300 brands from 69 countries and regions.

Covering 80,000 square meters, including 60,000 square meters of international exhibition space featuring products including jewelry, food and health products from leading brands, the expo is expected to attract more than 20,000 buyers and over 200,000 visitors.

According to the provincial bureau of international economic development, the first batch of 20,000 tickets for the public was sold within four hours via the Internet.

"The expo will realize direct transactions between global buyers and sellers, introduce foreign high-quality consumer goods, and make up for the shortage of domestic high-end product supplies," said Wang Bingnan, China's vice minister of commerce.

"The expo will build a global exhibition and trading platform for international consumer products, conducive to building Hainan into an international tourism consumption destination," Wang added.

With the expo just around the corner, batches of imported products have been delivered to Haikou, capital of Hainan province, in recent days.

Among them is a G. Patton GX vehicle, manufactured in the United States and weighing 3.1 tonnes, arriving at Haikou's Xiuying Port.

"The car is worth 3.8 million yuan (about $580,260). Other vehicles from automobile brands like Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce will arrive at the port soon," said Zak Yuen Lee, president of KAWO International Trading (Hainan) Co Ltd.

"China is speeding up the construction of the Hainan free trade port (FTP) and there are a lot of preferential policies, such as tax cuts, which will save us hundreds of thousands of yuan in costs," said Lee, who registered the company in Hainan last year.

China proposed setting up a free trade zone in Hainan in 2018 and began construction of the Hainan FTP last year. On April 8, China released a guideline to support easing market access in the Hainan FTP. Over the past three years, a number of domestic and foreign companies have settled in Hainan.

Hainan's duty-free market has also been gathering steam. Official data showed the province's offshore duty-free sales are likely to exceed 60 billion yuan in 2021, up from 30 billion yuan last year, which had doubled from 15 billion yuan in 2019.

To ramp up its efforts to build itself into an international tourism consumption center, since July 1, 2020, Hainan has raised its annual tax-free shopping quota from 30,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan per person. The categories of duty-free goods have been expanded from 38 to 45, with electronic products such as mobile phones and laptops added.

Visitors' purchases at the consumer products expo will not be included in their annual quota.

Many foreign-invested firms are eyeing great potential in the consumption growth of the Hainan FTP.

Blackmores, an Australian health supplements company, has already confirmed its participation in the expo. It will have an exhibition booth of 200 square meters to offer visitors an immersive shopping experience.

"We will seize the opportunity of the expo to have direct contact with Chinese consumers to better know their demands and meet their needs for a better life," said Kitty Liu, managing director of Blackmores Group in China.

"The policies of the Hainan FTP and its international business environment have brought unprecedented chances to multinational enterprises like Blackmores. We will continue to actively ramp up our layout in Hainan," Liu added.

Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, a leading healthcare company, has also signed up for the expo to expand its business in China.

"As our strategic key market, China is not only a crucial growth engine for our global business, but also an increasingly vital innovation engine in the world," said Farrell Wang, managing director with Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health China.

The company will showcase its eight brands to consumers at the expo. "We hope the Hainan FTP will become an important gateway for China's opening-up and play a key role in promoting the innovation-driven high-quality development," said Wang.

"The expo will build an important bridge for global brands to enter the Chinese market. Consumption will promote the agglomeration of industry, capital and other factors to accelerate the construction of Hainan as an international tourism consumption center," Liu added.