By Tian Hong, People’s Daily
“Six days are just too short for us,” said many exhibitors at the end of the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) held last November.
Through the platform of the CIIE, many foreign exhibitors could build up a general picture of the Chinese market and its consumers, thus pinpointing the needs of Chinese consumers and exploring the business opportunities in the Chinese market.
To further turn the exhibits at the expo into commodities and develop the 6-day event into an all-year-round campaign, Shanghai has established “6 days + 365 days” One-stop Trading Service Platforms.
These permanent trading platforms could be divided into four sub-types: comprehensive services platform, cross-border e-commerce platform, professional trading platform and national commodities center.
After the first import expo, the first batch of trading platforms brought in more than 20,000 products from nearly 800 exhibitors, with a value of over 9 billion yuan, and imported about 75.2 billion yuan worth of goods, an increase of 108 percent year on year.
Many “star exhibits” at the expo such as the Spanish ham, Australian wine, Japanese rice have entered the Hongqiao Import Commodity Exhibition and Trading Center in Shanghai in the form of bonded direct sales.
The center serves as one of the permanent trading platforms where bonded exhibition, transaction, logistics and storage services are all available.
As a major platform that demonstrates and expands the spillover effects of the CIIE, it is positioned as a distribution center of imported goods that connects the Yangtze River Delta, serves the whole nation, and even radiates the Asia-Pacific region.
Starting operation since May this year, the center has attracted more than 400 brands and 2,500 commodities from 26 countries, exploring the new models of bonded exhibition and post-exhibition trading.
On Sept. 25, a Type B bonded logistics center at the Shanghai Hongqiao Central Business District started operation, which can carry out bonded exhibition, transactions and cross-border e-commerce business.
Since imported commodities are directly shipped from merchants to the bonded platform, the operating costs of logistics and other procedures are reduced, said Cai Jun, general manager of the Hongqiao Import Commodity Exhibition and Trading Center, adding that many of the imported products are now sold at their respective overseas prices.
Greenland Global Commodity Trading Hub, another permanent exhibition and trade platform, is located next to the venue of the first CIIE. So far, it has received more than 350,000 visitors and held over 50 trade and business activities.
It has welcomed more than 700 professional buyers from home and abroad and helped 150 merchants find downstream channels.
To facilitate the second CIIE, another 18 platforms were licensed as permanent trading ones on Oct. 22, including the Hongqiao Free Trade City.
Besides continuing with the supporting services from the first expo, Shanghai has taken four new measures to improve the import expo this year, including setting up a special customs office at the expo venue, introducing big data to manage the event, simplifying the registration of food enterprises, and shortening the approval time.
The city has also used big data to facilitate online handling of cross-border trade formalities such as exhibition declaration and information comparison. In addition, the Shanghai Customs has set up 125 service windows and special channels for the expo to provide 24-hour services for the exhibitors.
