Photo: Screenshot of Canton Fair website

 
Around 8,000 firms will attend the 130th China Import and Export Fair, or Canton Fair, the organizers said on Wednesday.

The offline exhibition area of this year's Canton Fair will be 400,000 square meters, with a total of about 20,000 booths. A total of 7,795 companies will attend the fair, said Chu Shijia, deputy head and secretary-general of the fair's organizing committee.

There are 92 companies from 15 countries and regions including Europe, the US and Canada that will participate in the offline meeting, including a group of Fortune 500 companies and other industry-leading companies, he added. 

The fair, which will kick off on Friday, features both online and offline activities for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This mode is a new breakthrough, and it will be the new normal for the Canton Fair in the future,” Chu said. 

The 130th China Import and Export Fair will be held in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province from October 15 to 19. Its exhibition area of 400,000 square meters means it will be the largest offline exhibition fair amid the current global COVID-19 pandemic.
 
The exhibition will be separated into 51 zones according to the categories of products. The number of offline exhibition booths will be 19,181 with 7,795 enterprises set to attend.
 
There are also 60,000 online exhibition booths for about 26,000 Chinese and international enterprises to show their products. The number of uploaded online exhibits has reached 2.78 million so far, a new record.

The fair is taking strict measures to curb epidemic risks. All international arrivals will have to go through a 21-day quarantine at isolation centers instead of staying in the centers for 14 days and shifting to home quarantine for seven days.