30th East China Fair launched in Shanghai online

Ti Gong

The 30th East China Fair will be held online from Monday to 10pm on Friday via its official website www.ecf.org.cn.

At a launch ceremony on Monday, Shanghai Vice Mayor Xu Kunlin said it was the first time the fair was being held online and that would lead to unprecedented challenges.

“Authorities should make efforts to stabilize foreign trade and investment when facing the new challenges in current international trade, striving to hold a successful and fruitful online fair,” Xu said.

A buyer from Japan, Tomoaki Fujimura, leader of overseas logistics division in China of Daiso Industries Co, said the company had participated in the ECF for 15 years, and had benefited from the large number of exhibitors in the Yangtze River Delta whose products are mainly sold to Southeast Asia, with which Daiso can potentially build partnerships.

Wu Haiyang, of Nantong Dadong Co, said the company would be taking part in the fair for the 20th time. 

“Through this platform, we have successfully explored the domestic and Japanese markets and doubled our turnover from the initial 200 million yuan. We looked forward to this session of ECF to be held online as we can show more products with less effort,” Wu said.

This year's ECF provides a round-the-clock online foreign trade platform and has set up five major exhibitions in clothing and accessories, textiles and fabrics, home supplies, decorative gifts and modern lifestyles.

The fair also has special zones for pandemic-prevention material, which will help overseas buyers connect with Chinese manufacturers, domestic sales of commodities originally produced for export, as well as for cross-border e-commerce.

A total of 3,520 companies will take part as exhibitors this year with 71,759 exhibits uploaded and 21,017 buyers registered. 

Four online "matchmaking sessions" linking buyers and exhibitors will take place from July 13 to 16 for Japanese and South Korean buyers (1pm to 3pm on July 13), European and American buyers (4pm to 6pm on July 14), those from the Belt and Road regions (1pm to 3pm on July 15), and those in the textile and garment industry (1pm to 3pm on July 16).

The ECF is China’s largest regional trade fair, featuring traders from around the world, and also has the highest turnover. It supported by the Ministry of Commerce and organized by Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Shandong, Nanjing and Ningbo.

Last year’s event attracted more than 4,000 exhibitors, including 452 from overseas. Trade deals added up to US$2.31 billion, of which turnover on textiles and garments was US$1.03 billion, and trade in art gifts and consumer goods US$1.2 billion.