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Zhongshan Special :Zhongshan trade fair increases business at home and abroad

By Qiu Quanlin (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-30 07:51

The opening ceremony of the Zhongshan Trade and Investment Fair that opened on Monday drew visitors from around the globe. Provided to China Daily

Thanks to its strong economic ties overseas, Zhongshan, in Guangdong province, signed an impressive number of trade agreements at the annual Zhongshan Trade and Investment Fair.

The city signed around 250 investment and trade agreements, at the event on Monday. These are worth more than $6.1 billion, city government sources have said. As much as $1.94 billion of that is in exports.

The city also signed agreements on 119 foreign-backed projects, worth about $1.23 billion, the city government said.

The annual fair, started in Hong Kong in 1990, has become a key government-backed affair to help local industries become a part of the global economy, explained Feng Yurong, vice-mayor of Zhongshan.

"The event has proven effective in helping local companies improve industry," Feng commented.

Visitors talk at the annual Zhongshan Trade and Investment Fair.

This year, the fair's focus was on new industries of strategic importance, improving local industries, and strengthening cooperation with European companies.

To help attract investment from Europe's new, high-tech, environmentally friendly industries, Zhongshan arranged a series of match making events for local companies and their European counterparts.

After the fair, the local government invited European company representatives to visit townships and development zones developing emerging industries for LEDs, healthcare, medical equipment, and online games.

"In this way, European companies will get a deeper understanding of local industries, so they can find more business opportunities here," Feng said.

The Zhongshan government organized more than 30 local companies in these fields to get them to attend the fair.

Also invited were industry transfer zones in the cities of Zhaoqing, Heyuan and Yangjiang. This idea, from the Zhongshan government, was intended to give local companies business opportunities, and the possibility of transferring industries to neighboring cities.

Zhongshan is also placing importance on modern service industries and is introducing as many as 92 projects in that area.

In relation to this, institutes from the cities of Beijing, Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Guangzhou attended the event to promote several hundred of high-tech projects, while looking for cooperation with local companies, according to the Zhongshan government.

"We placed great hope in this event as a means to strengthen foreign economic and trade cooperation," Feng explained.

City government sources said about 300 business people from Europe, the United States, Columbia, the United Arab Emirates and Japan attended the fair.

"Companies from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, the US and Europe have shown great interests in investing in Zhongshan, not just in signing trade agreements,," Feng concluded.

(China Daily 03/30/2011 page14)