Republic of Korea is the country of honor of the 5^th CISMEF, which will be the brightest spotlight of this year’s CISMEF.

In recent years, the bilateral cooperative partnership between China and Korea has gained the strong momentum for rapid development with remarkable achievements made in the overall promotion of the extensive 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. The two governments attach great importance to the bilateral cooperation between the enterprises of both countries and the promotion of the SME development.

Both parties pay special attention to the co-sponsoring of the 5^th 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 5^th 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. 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. 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 5^th 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 5^th 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.

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, which will vigorously promote both China and Korea to joint efforts to sponsor the 5^th CISMEF and bring it into a smooth success.

It is the first time to set up the exhibition hall for 45 ASEM member countries.

To fully implement “Beijing Declaration on Strengthening Cooperation among ASEM Members on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)” jointly published at the ASEM Senior Officials Meeting sponsored by the Chinese government in October last year in Beijing, the 5^th CISMEF will make a point of setting up “ASEM SMES Cooperation & Exchange Exhibition Area” and providing the free exhibition booths to 45 members of ASEM, which highly embodies the characteristics of “Endless vitality and mutual prosperity of SMEs” and cooperation achievements. “ASEM Exhibition Area” will be another remarkable spotlight in the 5^th CISMEF, and the achievements of the fair will be presented to the 7^th ASEM summit conference to be held in October this year in Beijing.

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.