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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, May 13, 2002

China keeps trade tradition alive with biannual fairs

By Elaine Kurtenbach
Associated Press

GUANGZHOU, China — China's ascent as a modern trading power began on the banks of the murky Pearl River, where British merchants traded silver for Chinese tea and silk — then brought in opium to get their silver back.

A fairgoer films a tiger on video at the Guangzhou trade fair. Chinese manufacturers are looking for new overseas customers because of tougher competition from China's World Trade Organization membership.

Associated Press

Despite wars, foreign occupation and political upheavals, Guangzhou — formerly known as Canton — has been trading ever since.

And the biggest commercial event in town is a twice-annual trade fair that during Chairman Mao Zedong's day was basically the outside world's only chance to meet with Chinese manufacturers.

Although the rest of China has opened up, giving businesses many more avenues to pursue, the Guangzhou fairs still account for one-fifth of China's exports.

Organizers said they are hoping for a resurgence as the economy opens further as part of the World Trade Organization.

China's WTO membership will bring more foreign goods and services into the mainland, providing more competition for domestic manufacturers, who in turn are hunting for new customers for their exports.

Fairgoers choose from a mind-boggling variety of items: ice shavers, beaded ball gowns, dentist chairs, hacksaws, bathroom scales, chemicals, pitchforks, glue guns, paint rollers, machetes, microwaves, pajamas, pickled plums.

WTO membership means Chinese now can sell at the lowest available tariff rates to many more countries than in the past, and a large share of the buyers were from developing countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

"We're still a bit behind the U.S., but there are buyers from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America who will be satisfied with our products and happy with our lower prices," said Li Lichuan, a marketing executive with the Nanjing Foreign Economic and Trade Development Co. Ltd.

Founded in 1957, the Guangzhou fair originally lasted a month. Mao's portrait hung at the entrance, back when trade accounted for less than one-tenth of China's economic activity. It now generates about a third.

Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong, the province near Hong Kong that since the late 1970s has pioneered China's dealings with the world as overseas Chinese poured billions of dollars back into their homeland.