The Canton Fair: A History

Developed as a channel to promote trade with the rest of the world, the Exhibition of Chinese Export Commodities, the Canton Fair as it is now known, was established in 1956. In the following spring, the first exhibition was staged in the former Sino-Soviet Friendship building and there has been no looking back since.

As a testament to China's economic and political development over the last 50 years, the Canton Fair is now an expertly crafted, sophisticated exercise in business relationship management, conferencing, staging, exhibitions, and of course the culmination of export industries from across the world. What's more, the fair brings together over 100, 000 products from a myriad of famous brands, and is the place to showcase new products, technologies, and solutions today.

As the Chinese are eager to prove to the world their ability in a range of industrial, manufacturing, technological, and service industries, the fair also provides space for "Special Exhibition Sections" to encourage both domestic exports and foreign imports of high quality items.

Originally, the fair was attended by people located primarily within the East Asia region, and in particular those countries with whom China maintained close relationships. But as the fair became established and China's second generation leadership embarked on their reform policies, a wider range of foreign businesses were compelled to attend. Recently, the fair has consistently seen in excess of 80,000 business people in attendance. In recent years, each session of the Fair has been visited by more than 80, 000 foreign business people. With that, the amount of effort, planning and organisation that goes into the Canton Fair has become an industry in itself, with the development of world class conference facilities and catering now rivalling the very best, not to mention the exhibitions themselves.

This is perhaps more starkly illustrated by the fact that during 1959-61 (dubbed the "Three Years of Difficulty"), the fair continued to increase its export trade by 4.9% and 17.5% year on year. Similarly, during the "Ten Years of National Turmoil", the fair continued to generate export revenues of $500 Million in 1970, and $1 Billion in 1972, a sure sign of the growing popularity and high regard in which business people across the world held the fair.

Today, the fair attracts many different established and emerging trades which means that the trading delegations have to be sorted by different provinces and municipalities and the exhibition halls themselves are organised by Chambers of Commerce. Although the trading delegations and exhibition halls are connected to a degree, it is more logical for the exhibitions to be grouped according to trade.