Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong province, will hold the first live streaming festival in China to promote sales in various fields, Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau disclosed Wednesday.

A woman sells local farm products via live streaming in Zhashui county, Shaanxi province on Apirl 21, 2020. (Photo/Xinhua)

The festival, marking the country’s first festival for product promotion via live streaming activities based in a city, will last for three days and is expected to witness more than 200,000 live streaming shows.

Slated to kick off at the beginning of June, the event will include all live webcasts of several companies in multiple industries, while fully displaying Guangzhou’s abundant supply of goods, fast logistics, and mature supply chain.

Under a “1+N” pattern, the event will have a main venue and multiple parallel sessions across the city, with efforts expected to boost offline consumption through online promotion for iconic featured business areas, cultural and tourism projects as well as shopping malls.

Besides traditional wholesale and retail trade, operators in other industries such as accommodation, catering, manufacturing, rental service, commercial services, as well as the education field, will all join the event to promote products and services.

The event will also contribute to the country’s anti-poverty endeavor by promoting quality agricultural products and local specialties of impoverished regions, helping promote and sell products of central China’s Hubei province, the worst-hit province in China during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Foreign trade enterprises and companies engaging in cross-border e-commerce are encouraged to promote export commodities at home via live webcasts during the event to help reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these enterprises.

Live streaming e-commerce has become a new form of business and represents the direction of the development of e-commerce, said Qi Xianjun, a researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.