The 120^th China Import and Export Fair (also referred to as Canton Fair) opened in Guangzhou on October 15. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, sent a congratulation letter.

 

Li Keqiang, Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC and Premier of the State Council, gave an instruction and expressed congratulations.

 

In the letter, President Xi Jinping mentioned that, in the past 60 years, the Canton Fair has played an important role in promoting China’s opening-up and economic and social development by serving the national reform and opening-up, socialist modernization and the domestic and foreign enterprises.

 

He said that, under the new circumstance, the Canton Fair should put the development concepts of “innovation, coordination, green, opening-up and sharing” into substantial practice to innovate on various systems and mechanisms and business modes, improve services and support enterprises as attendees to the fair to seek for mutual benefits and mutual development. It should give a better play to its functions as a comprehensive platform for opening-up to make full use of the two markets and two kinds of resources from a higher level to promote the open economic development of China and make greater new contributions to the open economic development of the world.

 

In his instruction, Li Keqiang said that, in the past 60 years, the Canton Fair has been an important window for China’s opening-up and a critical platform for enterprises to enter international market. It has been making positive use of the international and domestic markets and the two kinds of resources to make great contributions to the economic opening-up and development of China by integrating the “bringing in” and “going global” strategies. He hopes that new development concepts will be adopted to promote profound reform and innovation of the Canton Fair based on the new round of higher requirements for opening-up and the practices in internationalization, specialization, marketization and informatization will be further improved to provide stronger support for enterprises to expand market and develop brands with strong competitiveness, promote optimization and upgrading of trade structure, foster new advantages for international competition and make new contributions to sustainable and sound economic and social development.

 

The Canton Fair is held twice each year. Since 1957, when the first spring Canton Fair was held, the fair has had a history of 60 years. Therefore, it is China’s largest comprehensive international trade fair with the longest history and the largest number of attendees. The 120^th Canton Fair will last from October 15 to November 4, with a total of 24,500 domestic and foreign exhibitors.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, October 15, 2016