International exhibitors participating in the fifth China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE) in Haikou City, south China's Hainan Province have expressed their appreciation for the event, saying the expo serves as a platform which offers vast opportunities for their businesses to expand globally.
Scheduled from April 13 to 18, the fifth CICPE has attracted exhibitors from 71 countries and regions, covering emerging sectors such as digital consumption, health products, and green consumption.
Meng Weiwei, co-founder of a chocolate company in Canada, said the company has participated in the exhibition for five consecutive years. Thanks to the platform provided by the expo, the company has transformed from an importer into an exporter.
Five years ago, Meng's team brought imported chocolate to the first CICPE, where they unexpectedly discovered the advantages of Hainan's preferential policies, including 'zero tariffs' and 'tax exemptions on value-added processing products.' They held an emergency meeting on the first day of the event and decided to establish their company's first production base in Asia right here in Hainan.
"Five years ago, we were just simply selling chocolate. We never expected that today we would have built a factory in Hainan and established a research and development center there. In the future, we also hope to export our products overseas and bring them back to Canada," said Meng.
This year, they have planned to expand into the Southeast Asian market by leveraging the policies under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest free trade deal to date.
The RCEP covers 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its five free trade agreement partners, namely China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
They have planned do so with a good reason as Hainan is well positioned to serve as an important hub for comprehensive strategic cooperation between China and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) due to its geographic proximity.
Moreover, the coastal island has seen its trade with RCEP members growing rapidly. According to Haikou Customs, the total annual value of imports and exports between companies in south China's Hainan Province and RCEP member countries had increased from 57.36 billion yuan (around 7.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2021 to 102.98 billion yuan (around 14.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024, marking an overall rise of around 80 percent.
Like Meng, many exhibitors from across the world have recognized the expo's unique potential and expressed their hope to expand business in China and beyond.
"For my first time here，I really wanna get a better feel for what the Chinese consumers are looking for to understand the style of business that is conducted, and to hopefully meets importers and distributors that are related to duty free," said an exhibitor from Canada.
Hu Tao, chairman of Pacific Alpacas, an alpaca fiber provider from New Zealand, said his company plans to establish an overseas warehouse in Hainan as part of its future global expansion strategy.
"When we first came to the CICPE, it was really just to give it a try and see how things would go. We brought a few products to the booth, and by the third day, all our products for sale here had completely sold out. Looking ahead, we are planning to set up an overseas warehouse for our brand in Hainan, which could even serve markets like Japan, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries," he said.
Int'l exhibitors see CICPE as platform offering vast opportunities for global business expansion
