Foreigners attracted to the International Folk Song and Art Festival in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have shown great enthusiasm in the handicrafts at an exhibition arranged for small private businesses.

More than 100 private companies brought 300 varieties of products ranging from food, handicrafts, beverage and drinks to Chinese medicine, tonics, electrical appliance and mechanics.

Tourists and business people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao, the United States, Britain, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand attended the Festival.

An automatic ploughing machine developed by the Guangxi Blue Sky Group attracted a lot of attention at the Festival. The machine won an international gold medal at the Einstein New Invention Exposition in 1997. The machine can be used for grain planting in mountainous regions.

The private sector in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has been booming in recent years with one million private companies employing 1.6 million people.