An interview with Mr. Chen Xiangxin, deputy director and concurrently executive director of the Secretariat of the CISMEF Organizing Committee and deputy director of Economic & Trade Commission of Guangdong Province
Reporter: Mr. Chen, thanks for sparing time out of your tight schedule to have this interview with us. You have been a leading official of CISMEF for five sessions and you are quite clear about the preparation for the 5th CISMEF, so as the deputy director and concurrently executive director of the Secretariat of the CISMEF Organizing Committee and deputy director of Economic & Trade Commission of Guangdong Province, could you please have a special interview with us about the relevant problems of the 5th CISMEF?
Chen: With pleasure.
Reporter: Compared with the previous CISMEFS, what are the new changes of the 5th CISMEF?
Chen: We have ushered in the 5th CISMEF this year, which is scheduled to be held in Guangzhou International Conference and Exhibition Center from Sept 22- 25, 2008. The 5th CISMEF is similar to the previous sessions in scale with a total of 5000 international standard exhibition booths, 1000 of which will be used by enterprise exhibitors from the country of honor and other countries and regions and another 4000 of which will be used by the domestic small enterprise exhibitors. This year’s country of honor is Republic of Korea.
Different exhibition areas are available for the 5th CISMEF, such as, Korean Exhibition Area, International & Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Exhibition Area, Banking Service and SMES Service Industry, large-scale chain-store enterprise exhibition area, SMES Service Exhibition Area, Home Electric Appliances and Furniture and Home Lighting, Ceramics and Building Material exhibition area (including environmental protection building material and modern furniture), machine equipment exhibition area, IT, toys and craftwork Exhibition area, textile and garment, shoes and Suitcases exhibition area, Foodstuff and Medicine Exhibition Area, etc. This session particularly makes a point of adding the ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area.
The 5th CISMEF will also sponsor a series of vital activities, such as, SMES Forum and training, etc.
Reporter: Starting from the second CISMEF, we co-sponsored the CISMEF with France, Italy and Japan, etc., so we have brought the CISMEF into the spotlight of the world with its excellent features of the international fair. Could you please tell us why we choose Republic of Korea as the country of honor of the 5th CISMEF?
Chen: It is mainly based on the closely-knit commercial and trade relationship and the cooperation between enterprises of the two countries. In recent years the bilateral relationship between China and Korea has maintained the rapid development with remarkable achievements obtained in the full promotion of the cooperation in all fields. At present, China is the first trade partner of Republic of Korea and the largest export market and the target country for its investment and Korea is the third largest trade partner and the forth primary source of foreign direct investment of China.
During the period of the third and forth session of CISMEF, Republic of Korea organized enterprise exhibitors with a certain scale to exhibit the positive public image of the relevant departments and enterprises of Korea in CISMEF.
Reporter: It is reported that CISMEF is highly mentioned in the recent “Sino-Korea Joint Declaration”. Could you please say something about it?
Chen: The two governments attach great importance to the bilateral cooperation between the enterprises of both countries and the promotion of the SME development.
During the period at the end of May when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak paid a visit to China, CISMEF was officially incorporated into the events of “Further expansion of commercial and trade cooperation” in “Sino-Korea Joint Declaration” with the joint efforts and strong support from the sponsoring departments of the state, foreign affairs department, etc, which fully demonstrates that the two governments pay vital attention to Sino-Korea Small and Medium Enterprises Fair
Reporter: Up to now, what has been done by both sides for the co-sponsoring of the 5th CISMEF?
Chen: Both parties pay special attention to the co-sponsoring of the 5th CISMEF. Since the end of last year, the Secretariat of the CISMEF Organizing Committee has maintained the close contact and communication with the Consulate of Republic of Korea in Guangzhou and the other relevant Korean organizations in China. In March and April this year delegations respectively organized and dispatched by Economic & Trade Commission of Guangdong Province and Korean Small and Medium Enterprise Administration exchanged mutual visits and conducted repeated discussion and communication concerning a series of matters, such as, exhibition promotion, news publicity, forum and activities and exhibition arrangement and art performances and evening parties, etc. On April 8, representatives from both parties reached a consensus on a series of general planning and arrangement of the co-sponsoring of the 5th China International Small and Medium Enterprises Fair & Sino-Korea Small and Medium Enterprises Fair and signed a memorandum of cooperation with the co-sponsoring, specifically specifying that Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Small and Medium Enterprise Department of Korea as the executive organizers on the Korean side.
Reporter: As far as know, the exhibition arrangement of the previous CISMEF conducted the country of honor in a highly effective way and with a certain scale, so how about this year’s exhibition arrangement conducted by Korea?
Chen: On April 8, the Chinese side and the Korean side signed “the Memorandum of the co-sponsoring of the 5th China International Small and Medium Enterprises Fair & Sino-Korea Small and Medium Enterprises Fair”. According to the terms and conditions of the memorandum, the Korean side will organize more than 300 enterprises to participate in the fair with the exhibition area of no less than an exhibition hall, equivalent to 10,000 square meters. By then the excellent representatives of the Korean small and medium enterprises in all industries and trades will get together in CISMEF for the exhibition of their products.
Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP), one of the executive organizers, will organize 100 design, creative consultancy enterprises and the Korean design exhibition area with 50-100 exhibition booths will present a remarkable spotlight at the 5th CISMEF.
Besides, Korea will organize the domestic purchasers, businessmen to participate the CISMEF. Korea makes the preliminary plan to hold the activity entitled as “Day of Korea” during the period of the 5th CISMEF so as to further strengthen the mutual exchange between people from all walks of life, either from China or from Korea, and create the atmosphere for the strong economic cooperation and exchange.
The Chinese side will organize the enterprise exhibitors in the proportion of 3:1 to participate in the business negotiations and discussions with the Korean enterprises. The 5th CISMEF will be the largest fair attended by the outbound group of Korean small and medium enterprises.
Reporter: There is no less than 100 days from the opening ceremony of the 5th CISMEF and how about the actual situation of the exhibition promotion in foreign countries and regions?
Chen: Things are going ahead smoothly. At present 1218 exhibition booths have been subscribed for with approximately 550 booths of 10,000 square meters for Korean exhibitors and 668 booths for enterprises from Asia and Europe and other countries and regions, particularly Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Reporter: I notice that the ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area is newly added to the full package of the exhibition areas, so now could you please give us a brief introduction of its background?
Chen: On the Sixth ASEM Senior Officials Meeting held in 2006, Premier Wen Jiabao advocated the sponsoring of the ASEM SMEs Ministerial Meeting. In October 2007 at the ASEM SMEs Ministerial Meeting sponsored by the Chinese government in Beijing delivered “Beijing Declaration on Strengthening Cooperation among ASEM Members on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)” with the view of: 1. strengthening governmental cooperation and promotion of the policy exchanges for SMEs; 2. bringing the role of the non-governmental organizations into full play and pragmatically promoting the commercial and trade cooperation between SMEs; 3. establishing the sound service systems so as to provide SMEs with the excellent service; 4. Enhancing the capability of technical innovation so as to realize the sustained development of the SMEs; 5.strengthening industrial and regional cooperation and expanding the fields for investment of the SMEs, etc.
The “ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area” particularly set up in the 5th CISMEF is to implement the important measures initiated at the ASEM SMEs Ministerial Meeting. Free exhibition booths will be provided in this exhibition area for 45 members of the ASEM SMEs Ministerial Meeting, which highly embodies the characteristics of “Endless vitality and mutual prosperity of SMEs” and cooperation achievements
Reporter: How dose it go with the preparation of “ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area”?
Chen: To implement this proposal and motivate ASEM members to participate in the fair of the ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area, we held the briefing meeting on the “ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area” in Beijing in January 30 this year and the relevant actual situations were directly reported to diplomatic envoys or representatives from the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Korea, Japan, India, Thailand, Bulgaria, Portugal, Malaysia, Romania, Czech Republic, Pakistan, Laos, Cyprus, Brunei and Malta, etc, all of which are the members of ASEM, and the specific events concerning the establishment of “ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area”.
During the period from the last third part of February to the middle ten-day of March, the Secretariat of the CISMEF Organizing Committee respectively organized two working groups to some countries of European Union (EU) (Holland, Portugal, Spain and Greece) and ASEM countries (Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei) for exhibition promotion, paid visits to the Chinese embassies and consulates in all countries and regions, the competent SMEs departments and the local influential chambers of commerce and the associations. The two working groups paid visits to European Commission, secretariat of ASEM and other more than 30 official and social societies or organizations and held more than 10 recommendation meetings attended by more than 600 associations and enterprise representatives so as to vigorously promote the progress of the overseas exhibition promotion.
Through the joints efforts, the exhibition promotion has obtained the positive results in 45 members of the ASEM. In addition to the country of honor , Republic of Korea, 21 members of the ASEM fed back their willingness to attend the fair with the pre-subscription for 498 exhibition booths, respectively India, Italy, Viet Nam, Poland, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, France, Japan, Bulgaria, Denmark, EU, Slovenia, Sweden, ASEM, Brunei, Spain, Greece, Myanmar, Germany and Malaysia.
Reporter: It is highly believed that a series of the sweeping actions of internationalization will add luster to CISMEF and we sincerely wish the fair a great success. Thanks again for sparing time out of your full schedule to have such an interview with us.
