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Swedish Businessman's 36 Year Romance with China's Trade Fair
Among the 100,000 overseas businessmen attending the ongoing 89th China Export Commodity Fair,the experience of Italian-Swedish businessman, Peppinog Cocozza, is so unique that nobody else could surpass him.
Ever since the October of 1966, when he came to China for the first time for the fair at the age of 26, Cocozza has never missed the biannual fair in the past 36 years, and he always carries a red-covered small book containing English-language quotations from the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong together with his passport.
Mao was a charismatic revolutionary figure in China as well as one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, and the People's Republic of China.
To Cocozza, who deals in ceramic products, toys and seasonal items, the quotations book means nothing except it is an evidence of his history of contact with China.
Now the quotations book may be an outdated book for most Chinese as it was a copy of the first pocket edition published by the Foreign Language Press in 1966. But it was ubiquitous in China in 1966 and almost every Chinese had a copy if he or she was revolutionary or appeared to be.
The book was given to him in 1966 by a Chinese "red guard," or radical youth, before he stepped into the Dongfang Hotel.
"I read the red the book from cover to cover, from A to Z, and later on several biographies on Chairman Mao," said Cocoza at his room at the five-star China Hotel, proudly displaying the book.
"This book has been with me for 36 years, and I will keep it forever," said Cocozza.
On his impression of China over the past decades, Cocozza said "China is much, much better, and you can find whatever you want."
He said he was impressed by the growing varieties of products at the trade fair during the past few years, the flexible price, and the atmosphere in which he and other businessmen can do business freely and on equal footing.
"But When I first came to China in 1966, there were very limited varieties of products to buy from China, and the price was the same everywhere in China. It was all set by the government."
He bought up to 5 million U.S. dollars worth of products from China almost every year in the past, mostly ceramic products, toys and seasonal items, accounting for about 85 percent of his company 's total imports.
In 1966, however, he bought only 50,000 U.S. dollars worth of products from China, mostly pencils, pencil-sharpeners, flashlights, accounting for 5 percent of his international import.
While Cocozza's import from China has been increasing rapidly during the past three decades, every time the trade fair would reap 12 billion U.S. dollars' worth of export orders, compared with only 480 million U.S. dollars in 1966.
Cocozza, 62, still remembers that when he was in Guangzhou for the first time "there were very few cars on the street in Guangzhou, let alone taxis, and the street lamps were very dim."
"Now Guangzhou has changed so much as if it was another city, it could be compared to New York," he said.
He described himself as a self-made man as he had received only a four-year primary school education due to poverty, and had to immigrate to Sweden from Italy to make a living in the 1960s.
Cocozza, the managing director of a trade company with 30 staff in Linkoping, said the open and vibrant economy in China has brought him to do business, he said.
"China made me feel younger, I'm only 17 inside."
In addition, the Chinese culture and the hospitality of the Chinese people are also factors that have brought him to China more and more often.
"I like Sichuan food very much, which is very hot, and the Guangdong food is also very nice."
Every time he comes to China he will do some sightseeing in other parts of China and visit some suppliers before coming to the fair.
"I spend about a month every year in China, much longer than the time I spend in (my hometown) Italy."
"I would come to China every year until I can't move" said the gray-haired businessman.
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