The exhibition industry is picking up! Foreign investment has undiminished confidence in the Chinese market, and Chinese enterprises are not afraid of geographical obstacles when going overseas

An in-person meeting is worth a thousand emails.

From Hannover Messe and Pack Düsseldorf, to the Consumer Expo, China International Medical Equipment Fair and the current Artificial Intelligence Conference, after three years of the pandemic, more and more exhibitions have returned to offline. As one of the world's largest exhibition and conference organisers, Reed Exhibitions Greater China President Eric Cheng is best aware of the changes and unchanged in the international economy in recent years. Since the reopening of the country at the beginning of the year, he has been shuttling to the scene of various exhibitions at home and abroad, closely communicating with exhibitors and exhibitors, and taking the pulse of the global economy and the warmth and cooling of China's foreign trade. At the end of June, the Shanghai Summit of CEOs of the International Convention and Exhibition Industry restarted after three years. More than 300 people attended the meeting, including executives from international exhibition groups and institutions in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and other countries, industry associations in Southeast Asian countries and regions, and heads of national industry authorities, associations and exhibition enterprises. At the same time, the "Shanghai Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of the Convention and Exhibition Economy and Building an International Convention and Exhibition Capital (2023-2025)" was officially released. By 2025, Shanghai's ability to allocate global resources will be further improved, the global influence and international competitiveness of Shanghai will be further enhanced, the market mechanism will be more mature, exhibition enterprises will be more dynamic, brand exhibitions will be more concentrated, and the international exhibition capital will be fully completed. Data show that in January ~ May, the exhibition area of major venues in Shanghai reached 5.33 million square meters.

See the confidence and expectations of foreign investors in the Chinese market

Before the interview with CBN, Zheng Zhisheng had just returned from Malaysia. He told CBN that the recent conference held by Reed Exhibitions Asia Pacific in Malaysia focused on how to drive the international demand of exhibitors and buyers across the region. "This demand actually shows a more ardent expectation and development trend from the end of last year to the beginning of this year. Among them, there are not only some domestic enterprises with strong willingness to go overseas, but also some pure foreign enterprises with long-term roots in China, relatively strong strength and relatively large volume. He said, "The latter hopes to find some emerging opportunities from all levels in the context of the opening of the country and the opening of the environment, so as to increase capital in China, continue to take root in the Chinese market, and continue to operate successfully." "Since the beginning of the year, Zheng Zhisheng and his team have clearly felt that in the post-epidemic era, enterprises from all over the world are very willing to go global. He learned from foreign clients that raw materials, labor costs and inflation are current challenges, "In this context, these foreign companies want to come to China and look for more opportunities." Of course, Zheng Zhisheng also learned from some international business personnel that there are still some inconveniences in visiting and conducting business in China, such as the extension of visa time and changes in the application process, which has caused some foreign exhibitors to miss some important industry exhibitions held in China. At the same time, for some large international enterprises, to transport large-scale advanced equipment to China to participate in the exhibition, in fact, it requires a lot of manpower, material resources and supporting resources. Therefore, he hopes that with the reopening up, a more optimized business environment can be created for foreign exhibitors, "If the supporting facilities, services and the entire environment can be further opened, it will be easier to promote the return of international exhibitors and visitors." "As an open platform, the exhibition is undoubtedly an important link connecting the industrial chain and supply chain, and it is also a window for insight into the global economic recovery. In May this year, Reed hosted the China International Medical Equipment Fair in Shanghai, with a scale of 320,000 square meters, with about 220,000 participants, including about 8,700 international visitors from 122 countries and regions. "At first, we were worried about whether there would be international exhibitors, but facts have proved that from the scale and investment of these industry giants, we can see their confidence and expectations in the Chinese market." Zheng Zhisheng said. He was particularly impressed by the fact that at this year's China International Medical Equipment Fair, GE sent a management team of more than 50 people around the world to participate in the exhibition. "In fact, it also reflects China's stable industrial development, which is very attractive to the international medical device market." He said. Zheng Zhisheng believes that with the improvement of comprehensive factors such as trade environment and trade conditions, these interactions and attention will be reflected in the exhibition industry more and faster. John Witt, Honorary Chairman of the International Federation of Exhibitions, said in a research report presented at the conference that in the 10 years from 2010~2019, China has been the growth engine of the global exhibition industry. In 2022, despite the temporary "shutdown" of the industry due to the epidemic, China will still be the second largest exhibition market in the world, after the United States and ahead of Germany. He believes that "in 2023, China's convention and exhibition industry will embark on the road of recovery. ”

How is global foreign trade recovering?

As far as international buyers are concerned, Zheng Zhisheng told First Finance and Economics that Southeast Asia and East Asia have recovered faster. In his view, Southeast and East Asia may be more flexible in terms of culture, language, and means of trade communication. "Among them, Indian visitors and buyers may actually be the strongest in so many countries, but due to visa and other issues, they can only participate through remote visits and docking services provided by some agents and organizers in China." Zheng Zhisheng said. As for the European and American markets, Zheng Zhisheng said that due to the entire economic environment and development situation, "from the perspective of cost control, European and American exhibitors currently prefer to participate in neighboring countries and regions, so as to obtain faster marketing effects." "But they can still see opportunities in the Chinese market." At the same time, our local branches in these countries will also actively introduce the latest situation of the Chinese market to international exhibitors, such as China's latest policies to attract foreign investment, the reduction of the new crown to 'Class B tubes' in China, the latest visa policies and international flight resumption information. In addition, Zheng Zhisheng also observed that although the international marketing budget of overseas exhibitors has decreased, their expectations for exhibiting in China are higher, such as arranging more business activities in the itinerary, or connecting with local governments and chambers of commerce, and meeting with potential partners, in order to achieve longer-term goals. Judging from the eagerness of Chinese exhibitors to go overseas, Zheng Zhisheng did not see that geopolitical factors had much impact on the willingness of Chinese exhibitors, but from the activity of participating in the United States, it can be seen that the enthusiasm and investment of Chinese enterprises are quite high. "Because everyone understands that opportunities are to be fought for and fought back. If you stop when you see a mountain ahead, you will never find a way out. "Of course, Chinese exhibitors are also increasing their presence around the American market, such as Brazil and Mexico." For example, in Europe, Japan, Australia, Southeast Asia, the scale of Chinese exhibitors has actually returned to the pre-pandemic level. Although some regions in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific region have been able to open up exhibitions in the past three years, the results of the exhibition have not been very good, because there are a large number of Chinese exhibitors and buyers, and there is a lack of interaction with Chinese business associations. Looking ahead to the broader business and economic environment, there is a lot of pressure, but Zheng believes that with the return of normalization, it is still hoped that more international flights can be resumed and the visa process is more convenient, "From the perspective of international exhibitors and visitors, we hope to return to at least the level before 2019 next year." ”

How is digital technology transforming the MICE industry?

The three-year epidemic has been both a challenge and an opportunity for the exhibition industry. "Digital empowerment, high-quality development of the future industry" is one of the themes of this summit. Chen Xianjin, honorary chairman of the International Exhibition Industry Association, director of the National Convention and Exhibition Industry Standardization Technical Committee and secretary of the Party Committee of the Shanghai Convention and Exhibition Industry Association, said that the Shanghai Summit is an important symbol for China's exhibition industry to fully resume foreign cooperation and return to the center of the global exhibition market, and it is also an important opportunity for the global exhibition industry to face new challenges and restore confidence in development. Embracing digitalization, innovating venue services, and better helping small and medium-sized enterprises to "go global" through the exhibition platform will become hot topics discussed at this summit. In this regard, Zheng Zhisheng still remembers that during the three years of the epidemic, in order to ensure the smooth holding of the exhibition, he had to adopt the method of "turning the whole into zero", for example, Shanghai could not be done and moved to Guangzhou, Guangzhou could not be done to Foshan, etc. "In these ways, we have been able to reserve some face-to-face opportunities for the industry. However, when offline exhibitions cannot be held during the epidemic, we also use some virtual technologies, including AR means, online exhibitions, and digital platforms to serve enterprises and buyers, and more in the form of business matching, to help enterprises deliver the value of their products in different ways. Zheng Zhisheng said. However, he believes that in the future, digitalization will completely replace the exhibition platform and the offline human-to-human interaction platform will not be realized, and more is the trend of online and offline integration. Of course, Zheng Zhisheng also noticed the current popularity of generative artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT. He believes that for exhibitors to participate in international exhibitions, ChatGPT may save a lot of transaction costs in translation in the future, and at the same time, when interacting and pairing with the audience, you can obtain audience portraits and travel trajectories through data analysis and data collation, making business needs more accurate, "Now is the time to consider how to embrace these technological means in the future." ”

Editors on duty: Lamb