Shanghai, Emerging Int'l Exposition Center

China's largest city Shanghai is becoming an increasingly popular venue for international conferences and exhibitions.

From the Fortune Forum and the UN Symposium on Disarmament and Security in Asia and Pacific to the coming summit of the Shanghai Five and the APEC annual meeting, more and more international conferences and expositions are being held in Shanghai.

According to industry sources, the city hosted 146 international conferences and about 200 international exhibitions in 2000.

Relevant figures show that international arrivals at Shanghai exceeded 1.8 million in 2000, while its tourism income totaled 1.5 billion US dollars.

Industrial sources attributed the city's emerging conference and exhibition industry to its increasingly important role as a national financial and trade center and an engine to the Chinese economy.

Since the 1990s, Shanghai's economy has been growing at a two- digit rate. Its GDP per capita exceeded 4,000 US dollars in 2000, five times the national average.

Intensive infrastructure investment over the last decade has provided the city with essential hardware.

In early 1980s, the Shanghai Exhibition Center is almost the only site suitable for large exhibitions, hosting 10 to 20 major events a year.

Since then, a bunch of large modern conference and exhibition facilities have been put into use, the Shanghai International Exhibition Center, the Everbright Conference and Exhibition Center, the Shanghai International Conference Center, the Jinmao Plaza, among others.

With these top facilities in place, the number of large regional and international conferences and exhibitions taking place in Shanghai has been increasing by nearly 20 percent a year.

Meanwhile, the city now has over 100 hotels rated between one star and five star in operation its 14 five-star hotels alone boast 17,000 bedrooms.

The city's over 100 professional exhibition firms, conference organizers and transport services also formed a key part in the emerging services.

In 2000, Shanghai hosted a record number of major international conferences and exhibitions, including the international conference on business incubation and technological innovation, the US Asia Society's 11th annual corporate conference and the High-Level Forum on City Information in the Asia-Pacific Region.

However, there is still much to be done for Shanghai to become an influential world conference and exhibition center, according to Hou Kaile, managing director of the Munich Trade Fairs Consultancy Shanghai Company.

Of all the exhibitions and trade fairs staged in Shanghai, few of them are of technical guidance to the relevant industries, and the city still lacks venues suitable for large technological exhibitions, he said.

For that purpose, three German exhibition firms, including internationally known Messe Munichen International and their Chinese partners are jointly investing 100 million US dollars for the building of the new Shanghai International Exposition Center, which will be partly operational by November.

Hou expressed the belief that with its arising high-tech department and advantageous position, Shanghai is assured of taking on the role of being a city with the best conference and exhibition center in Asia.






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