Canton Fair enters 2nd phase after 76-hour extreme makeover using smart tools

China

Canton Fair enters 2nd phase after 76-hour extreme makeover using smart tools

2026-10-23 16:06 Last Updated At：16:38

The second phase of the 140th China Import and Export Fair has opened after the organizer demolished and rebuilt about 25,000 booths in mere 76 hours, a feat achieved through smart tools such as intelligent logistics and AI-powered drawing review that turned setup work from a "battle of brawn" into a "battle of brains."

Also known as the Canton Fair, the biannual event is China's largest and longest-running comprehensive trade fair and a widely watched barometer of the country's foreign trade.

This year's autumn session is being held in three phases, running through Nov 4 in Guangzhou, the capital of south China's Guangdong Province. The ongoing second phase runs from Friday to Oct 27.

The Canton Fair completed a full-hall switch between its first and second phases in just 76 hours from 18:00 on Oct 19, when the venue closed, to 22:00 on Oct 22.

The turnaround covered the entire chain: taking down exhibits, removing display fixtures, dismantling booths and cleaning the halls, followed by building the next phase's booths, installing fixtures, arranging exhibits and setting up the venues.

Dismantling and rebuilding about 25,000 booths for the second phase within a three-day window placed extremely high demands on scheduling and coordination, as every step was closely interlinked.

"At this edition of the Canton Fair, we rolled out smart services covering logistics, exhibit handling, and vehicle access and parking, along with AI-powered booth design and drawing review. Compared with manual review, which used to take 30 to 40 minutes per drawing, AI review now returns a result in about one minute," said Huang Li, manager of the general management department at China Foreign Trade Center (CFTC), the organizer of the fair.

To boost transport efficiency, this edition of the Canton Fair introduced a new smart traffic management system. Exhibitors book entry slots via their phones, and the system centrally schedules each exhibitor's entry gate and time to prevent congestion among transport vehicles.

"Setting up ran smoother than before. We used the smart traffic management system, and our exhibits reached our booth smoothly," said Liu Tao, an exhibitor.

China's shipbuilding maintains leading position in Jan-Sept: ministry data

China's shipbuilding industry maintained its leading position in the world across the three major indicators in the first nine months this year, according to data released on Friday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

From January to September, the country's shipbuilding output reached 58.05 million deadweight tonnes (DWT), up 50.7 percent year on year and accounting for 63.6 percent of the global total, the data showed.

New orders totaled 175.29 million DWT during the period, surging 163.2 percent from a year earlier and representing 81.8 percent of the global market share.

As of the end of September, the sector's holding orders stood at 399.13 million DWT, up 64.8 percent year on year. This volume accounted for 72.4 percent of the global total.

The proportion of China's new orders of green energy-powered ships reached 74.1 percent of the global total, up 5.7 percentage points compared with the January-June period.

"China has received over two thirds of the world's new orders of green energy-powered ships this year. In fact, the volume of new orders of green energy-powered ships received by China in the first half of the year already exceeded that of the whole of last year. The sector's economic benefits will rise significantly, and may even surpass the historical peak. That will make a positive contribution to the growth of the industrial economy," said Li Yanqing, vice chairman of the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry.