China services trade fair offers opportunities for global businesses

BEIJING -- Eyeing China's huge market, global companies are attending a major services trade fair in Beijing to explore business opportunities in the world's second-largest economy.

Over 450 Fortune 500 enterprises and companies taking the lead in their respective industries, as well as 85 countries and international organizations, are represented at the 2024 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS). Themed "Global Services, Shared Prosperity," the five-day event opened in Beijing on Thursday.

Jack Chan, chairman of EY China, said CIFTIS brings together enterprises from around the world to share opportunities stemming from China's opening up and development of trade in services, while CIFTIS also helps enterprises build a big circle of friends for win-win cooperation.

China's high-quality opening up of the services sector provides broader market space and development opportunities for global services trade companies, Chan said.

Jacky Zou, chairman-elect of KPMG China, has a similar viewpoint, saying that Chinese modernization provides new opportunities for global development.

China's door is opening wider, and KPMG hopes to take advantage of the services trade fair and its own professional services and international networks to better help foreign companies expand in the Chinese market, and to assist Chinese enterprises in going global, Zou said.

China's trade in services has seen steady growth over the past few years, becoming a major growth engine for its foreign trade. The country's imports and exports of services grew 14.7 percent year on year to 4.2 trillion yuan (about 590 billion U.S. dollars) in the January-July period of 2024, official data showed.

China, which has a very large domestic market, is expanding its imports of quality services, thereby providing the world with new development opportunities, while also encouraging exports of knowledge-intensive services to offer the world the fruits of its high-quality development, said Wang Dongtang, an official with the Ministry of Commerce.

Global food giant Nestle is attending the fair for a second time, and has brought more than 10 types of products in three categories -- namely coffee, drinking water and baby nutrition.

"As a world renowned food and beverage company with a history of 158 years, Nestle always has confidence in the Chinese market," said David Zhang, CEO of Nestle Zone Greater China.

Nestle hopes to use this services trade fair to further strengthen cooperation and exchanges to better meet the demands of Chinese consumers and clients, by providing them with more innovative products and services, Zhang added.

German medical technology company Siemens Healthineers is a newcomer to the event, and has brought several of the world's leading medical products to the trade fair.

The trade fair is an important global platform for exchanges of medical innovations and technologies, providing vast opportunities to explore partnerships, said Lena Wang, vice president of Siemens Healthineers China.

Medtronic, one of the largest medical device companies in the world, is also a first-time attendee. It has brought over 60 products and solutions to the trade fair.

National-level exhibitions like CIFTIS and the China International Import Expo offer multinationals valuable opportunities for exchanges and cooperation, said Alex Gu, president of Medtronic Greater China.

Given China's massive population, unmet medical needs and the Chinese government's emphasis on people's health, the Chinese market has great potential, Gu noted.

Medtronic has always been optimistic about the Chinese market and hopes to further strengthen its local value chain layout in the future, thereby providing better medical services to Chinese doctors and patients, Gu added.