The 8th China International Import Expo (CIIE) concluded on Monday in Shanghai, garnering 83.49 billion U.S. dollars in trade deals which saw a 4.4 percent year-on-year growth from last year's edition.
The six-day event has also set a new record in terms of scale, featuring participation of 155 countries, regions, and international organizations. According to the Ministry of Commerce, it brings together 4,108 overseas exhibitors for a total exhibition area exceeding 430,000 square meters.
This year's CIIE featured the participation of 43 trade delegations and over 700 sub-delegations, with more than 460,000 registered visitors, a year-on-year increase of 7 percent. It offered diverse opportunities for exhibitors and buyers to do business and made exchanges, according to officials at a press conference on Monday.
"The Buyers' Zone received 20 chain retailers and leading e-commerce platforms, as well as 14 central state-owned enterprises, facilitating over 600 rounds of business negotiations. At the product selection meeting for VIP buyers, 1,300 rounds of matchmaking were carried out spanning agricultural products and food, consumer goods and healthcare products. The trade and investment matchmaking event attracted over 5,000 companies and industrial parks, with more than 300 cooperation intentions reached. The centralized signing event concluded nearly 600 cooperation agreements," said Wu Zhengping, deputy director of the CIIE Bureau.
The official also noted that this year's CIIE invited around 50,000 individual visitors who didn't joined a trade delegation or a registered organization, further promoting the expo.
"As of 12:00 on Monday, this edition of CIIE logged a total of 922,000 visits, an increase of 8.2 percent year on year, setting a new record in the expo's history. At the same time, the preparation for the 9th CIIE has been in full swing, with exhibition area reservations exceeding 80,000 square meters," said Wu.
China's 8th import expo garners record-breaking 83.49 bln dollars in trade deals
More than 770 high-tech companies have packed into 33 themed buildings at China's Xiong'an New Area, turning floor proximity into business partnerships in a government-engineered experiment to build innovation clusters outside the capital Beijing.
On April 1, 2017, China announced plans to establish the Xiong'an New Area, located about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing. The aim was to build a green city on an area of 1,770 square kilometers, featuring innovation and providing a national model of high-quality development.
Over the past nine years, facilities such as the Zhongguancun Science Park have begun high-quality operations in Xiong'an. In the Zhongguancun Science Park's low-altitude economy building, Zhu Xu, co-founder of a Beijing drone company, dropped in on a company located one floor below his to explore collaboration opportunities.
As the building houses numerous upstream and downstream enterprises in the low-altitude economy industry, with potential partners just a floor or two away, Zhu frequently receives invitations to matchmaking events where participants analyze the market and discuss technologies together.
"(The Zhongguancun Science Park) organizes matchmaking events on a regular basis. At one such session, we learned about a company on the 7th floor that share some technical similarities with us. We spoke with them promptly, and now we are gradually carrying out research and development and cooperation together," said Zhu.
Zhu's company moved to Xiong'an in Oct 2025. Shortly after relocating, Zhu began joint research and development with the company on the 7th floor. Together, they have upgraded drones to support remote intelligent ground operation, quickly developing a mature autonomous drone operation system.
"We open up real-world application scenarios to enterprises. Through various activities, companies link up naturally, and collaborations within the building have happened effortlessly," said Li Yue, deputy head of the Industry, Information Technology and Data Bureau of the Xiong'an New Area.
Zhu is among many people who pursue a career and a life in the Xiong'an New Area, which has been transformed from a stretch of raw land to a mapped plan, and then to a city -- a modern new town springing up in a matter of nine years.
In the process of relieving Beijing of functions non-essential to its role as China's capital, renowned universities and research institutes, major state-owned companies as well as start-ups are relocated to this vibrant area.
So far, more than 4,000 Beijing-origin companies have been relocated to Xiong'an, and more than 400 centrally administrated state-owned enterprises have set branches in the city.
Construction is rapidly ongoing on the campus buildings of four universities in the Xiong'an New Area -- Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing University of Science and Technology, Beijing Forestry University and China University of Geosciences.
In less than a decade, Xiong'an has adhered to high standards of planning and design, adopting a "moving in after infrastructure is in place" approach, ensuring that networks of water, electricity, gas, roads and bridges are established first.
Dubbed the "city of the future", Xiong'an is undergoing rapid changes. The developed area spans around 215 square kilometers with total investment exceeding one trillion yuan (about 145 billion U.S. dollars) and over 5,300 buildings shaping the urban skyline, housing 1.41 million residents and 669 high-tech enterprises.
Meanwhile, Xiong'an is becoming greener and more biodiverse. Since 2017, a total of 32,200 hectares of new afforested land has emerged in Xiong'an, bringing the total green area to nearly 50,000 hectares. The forest coverage rate has risen from 11 percent to 35.1 percent, according to official data.
China's Xiong'an New Area clusters tech firms in themed towers, spurring vertical supply chains
