Yang abandonment: Guangzhou, is returning?

Source: Daily Economic News

Author: Yang abandon Fei

Looking back at the history of 67 years, the opening of the Canton Fair and each transformation have greatly promoted the process of foreign trade in Guangzhou, showing the strong influence and driving force of the "China's First Exhibition".However, in recent years, the Canton Fair has also been slightly slightly loud. Now, can you help Guangzhou a journey again now?

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Guangzhou, who lost the position of the "Fourth City", is returning.

In March just in the past, with the return of the import and export of Guangdong, Guangzhou also changed the trend of import and export in the first two months.Narrow to 2.3%.

Foreign trade is the traditional strength of Guangzhou, and it is also an important "loss point" that GDP was overtaken by Chongqing last year.Affected by multiple factors, Guangzhou's import and export volume increased by 1.1%last year, and 2.0%behind Chongqing.

Entering 2023, Guangzhou successively appeared under the spotlight: Singapore Prime Minister Li Xianlong and French President Macron have visited one after another.By the attention.

On April 19, the first phase of the 133rd Canton Fair, which last, officially closed.Three years after the epidemic, the Canton Fair has been fully restored to the physical exhibition and restarted the "face -to -face" negotiation.The current Canton Fair has not only reached the largest scale, but also expanded from 1.18 million square meters to 1.5 million square meters in the past. There are imported exhibitions for the first three periods, and all commodities are open to overseas enterprises.

Business flowing in

"This year's Canton Fair will reproduce the grand occasion of Wan merchants.Said, the director of the China Foreign Trade Center, the Chief Said Said Said.

According to statistics, the Canton Fair has attracted buyers from more than 200 countries and regions, and offline exhibitors have increased from 25,000 to 34,933, a record high.Among them, there are more than 9,000 new exhibitors.In addition, online exhibitors also reached 39281.

and the latest data show that the number of people entering the hall on the first day of the Canton Fair is about 370,000, and the cumulative passenger flow of the pavilion has exceeded 1.1 million people in the first four days.

This is the long -lost traffic of the Canton Fair.Before the epidemic, the sound of the Canton Fair's "style micro" has a long history.According to data, in 2019, which has not been affected by the epidemic, the overseas buyers of the Spring Festival Canton Fair held during the same period were 195,000, a year -on -year decrease of 3.88%, and the cumulative export transactions were US $ 29.73 billion (S $ 39.6 billion), which also decreased by 1.1%;The highest peak period (2008) was US $ 38.23 billion, a difference of 8.5 billion US dollars.

Affected by the three -year epidemic and the complex situation of international trade, foreign trade enterprises must firmly seize the important platform of the Canton Fair and open up business opportunities.

Enterprises do not hesitate to come up with new products, so that the Canton Fair once again shows the role of the industry's "vane".According to preliminary statistics, there are 300 new first shows held by online and offline new products, involving 800,000 new products exhibition, covering industrial manufacturing, electronic home appliances, building materials and home improvement, hardware tools, home consumption, fashion life, health and leisure, etc.field.

Exhibitors rubbing their hands and look forward to "a big job". However, there are also many people's actual feelings that the Canton Fair that has just returned will take time to fully recover the vitality.

A more common voice is that overseas buyers are not as good as expected.For example, Chen Kaibin, the person in charge of Overseas Business, said in an interview with the media that from the perspective of passenger flow on the morning of April 15th, there are relatively few European and American merchants.In the prediction of the exhibitors, there is a process of the return of buyers. The October Autumn Canton Fair may usher in more European and American merchants.

A series of changes promoted by the Canton Fair also need time to digest.In order to accept more new domestic buyers, the Canton Fair deliberately "reduced" the threshold for the exhibition.In this regard, some exhibitors believe that the increase in the number of buyers does not necessarily mean increasing the intention of customers; and a large amount of traffic flow also brings a test for the organizational capabilities of the Canton Fair -it may take a long time from the application to the admission to the venue.

In a sense, whether it is exhibitors, buyers or the Canton Fair itself, it is still in a "adaptation period".But for the three of them, no chance to try.

Foreign Trade Reinception

The reality faced by the Canton Fair is the portrayal of the overall situation of Guangzhou's foreign trade.

From the perspective of data, Guangzhou import and export data are similar to the national trends.After changing the slump in the first two months, imports and exports in the first quarter of the country increased by 4.8%in the first quarter of the country, of which in March increased by 15.5%.Exports play an important pull role, with a single month growth rate of 23.4%.Similarly, the import and export of Guangzhou in March increased significantly, of which exports increased by 22.0%.

Regarding the expected growth of exports, Li Qilin, director of the Institute of Red Tower Securities Research Institute, wrote an analysis that the export order was put on hold due to the epidemic, and some companies went to sea to grab orders after the year.The delivery takes a certain period of time, and the previous order was concentrated in March.

Behind data, some fundamental problems have not been resolved.

In this way, Li Xingqian, director of the Department of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Commerce, analyzed that the main contradiction in China's foreign trade field has changed from last year's supply chain and insufficient performance capacity, and transformed into the current "weakening of foreign demand and decline in orders."

In terms of deeper level, Chen Yijun, Dean of the Double Circulation Development Research Institute of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, once pointed out the triple reasons: In addition to the weak market economy in the European and American market economy, low -cost competition in developing countries such as Asian'an is attracting part of the industrial chainThe downstream industry transfer, and the technological blockade of developed countries on China has also hindered the import of related fields in China.

The latter two reasons are directly related to Guangdong.Data show that Guangdong's two -month -old feed processing trade volume fell by 20.4%before.

Stabilizing foreign trade, we must first stabilize the industrial chain.The Canton Fair, which is accompanied by it, can act as a adhesive of the industrial chain.

Professor of the School of Foreign Affairs has mentioned in the book overflowing that on the surface, it has not been separated from the domestic supply chain.For example, the shoe and clothing enterprises that moved to Vietnam in the previous round were mostly transferred to a link with low demand for supply chain and high labor costs. HoweverA highly "chimeric" relationship.

In the industry, a view becomes more and more consensus: compared with the trend of reversing the relocation, Guangzhou should grasp the initiative of the industrial chain layout and more deeply integrate into the value chain of the global industrial chain supply chain.Through the platform effect of bonding resources and matching transactions through the Canton Fair, Guangzhou can better sit on the position of "helm" of the Trade Center.

In fact, the Canton Fair is also trying to broaden the boundary and extend the scope of the industrial chain touch.

Data show that at the current Canton Fair, the proportion of exhibitors in countries and regions along the “Belt and Road” accounted for further 73%, and in the first quarter of this year, the import and export of countries along the “Belt and Road” also increased by 16.8%.It accounts for 34.6 % of the total value of import and export, an increase of 3.5 percentage points.

In deepening the depth of the industryThe Canton Fair also intentionally attracted higher -top enterprises to settle in.In this Canton Fair, industrial automation and intelligent manufacturing, new energy and intelligent connected cars, smart life, silver -haired economy and other new exhibition areas and new areas have been added.

Calibration Positioning

In any case, the Canton Fair that gets the traffic has taken the first step of the new journey.How to make this step is yet to be tested, and for Guangzhou, how is the question played again to the Canton Fair?

The Canton Fair was once the "ace" in Guangzhou.In 1957, in order to break the trade blockade of Western countries, the "Canton Fair" was born.The heavy responsibility of Guangzhou is to use Hong Kong's "international channel" status to trade with the world.The "China First Exhibition", which was originally called the "China Export Commodity Exhibition", opened the unique foreign trade status in Guangzhou for decades.

Data show that the first year of the Canton Fair was as high as 86.86 million US dollars, accounting for 20%of the national revenue in the country that year, and then the proportion rose to more than 50%in 1972.Until the 1990s, cities such as Beijing and Shanghai once strived to relocate the Canton Fair and eventually unsuccessful.

But keeping the "golden signboard" does not mean that you can do nothing.

When the transaction volume of the Canton Fair faces many years of decline, the service trade and Expo settled in Beijing and Shanghai in 2012 and 2018, respectively.Under the trend of "three -legged", the Canton Fair was slightly dim:

Data, in 2019, the total transaction volume of relevant buyers at the Canton Fair reached 59.02 billion US dollars.In the same year, the cumulative intended turnover of the Expo all year round has reached US $ 711.3 billion; the amount of signing of the intention of the service trade conference is 105.06 billion US dollars.

Why did Guangzhou break through?Wang Xianqing, director of the Institute of Circulation Economics of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, mentioned that in 2008, Guangzhou had clearly proposed to build an international business center.

But as he said in an article in 2017, although the construction time is not short, in reality, "always make people feel that the actual effect is separated from setting goals" -Basily built the "International Business Center Center Center"The goal has been postponed from 2015 to 2020. Until now, the goal has been changed to the" International Consumer Center City ", but there is still a gap between the completion of the completion.

Many experts have given a similar answer to this question: Guangzhou has always lacked a stable positioning, and it is not very clear about what kind of business center to build a business center.Especially at the moment, the competition of business in the country is more intense, and the relationship between business and industry and industry is more complicated. Now Guangzhou needs more prudential thinking and planning than ever.

Earlier, Zheng Yongnian, Dean of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) Qianhai International Affairs Research Institute, pointed out in an interview with the media that Guangzhou must first choose the reference department to lead to the public.Don't compare with cities in Mainland China, Guangzhou will target advanced international cities such as Singapore, New York, San Francisco, and London.In his opinion, New York is a suitable object.

Similar to Guangzhou, New York is also a manufacturing center and a shipping center in the United States.With the advent of the information age, New York has gradually transformed into cities dominated by the financial and service industries.In contrast to Guangzhou, from the perspective of Zheng Yongnian, to create a comparative advantage, it is necessary to have a higher level of institutional openness to improve the marketization, rule of law, and internationalization of the business environment.Guangzhou wants to find a gap in these areas and make up for a shortcoming.