By Staff Reporters

The world's first national-level exhibition with a focus on supply chain took place in Beijing from November 28 to December 2. Themed “Connecting the World for a Shared Future,” the International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) served as a new platform for China’s high-level opening up efforts.

Positive U.S. participation

Among the overseas exhibitors of the first CISCE, U.S. enterprises accounted for 20 percent. “The number of American enterprises participating in the exhibition is far more than expected. A number of Fortune 500 and multinational companies such as Amazon, ExxonMobil, Apple, Tesla, General Medical, Intel, HP and Qualcomm will send senior representatives to the conference,” Zhang Shaogang, vice president of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), told Xinhua.

Many American companies take the CISCE as a place of new product launch, innovation and cooperation, and will display a series of new products, technologies and services, according to Zhang.

About 40 BRI partner countries present

In addition to the enthusiasm of European and American enterprises, Belt and Road (BRI) partners’ enterprises also accounted for a large proportion turning out for the chain Expo.

Lin Shunjie, chairman of the China International Exhibition Center Group Limited, told Beijing Business Today the number of BRI connected exhibitors accounted for nearly half of the total number of overseas exhibitors.

"We are not simply pursuing the amount of transactions during the expo. The main indicator to evaluate the actual effect of the expo is to see how many enterprises have established cooperation in the supply chain, whether the expo has helped improve efficiency and reduced costs for businesses," Yu Jianlong, deputy head of the CCPIT, told China Daily.

Open to the public

With an exhibition area of over 100,000 square meters, the expo dedicated spaces to supply chains for smart vehicles, green agriculture, clean energy, healthy living and digital technology.

The CISCE not only invited Chinese and foreign enterprises to participate, but also opened its doors to the public. While the first three days were dedicated to business visitors, the last two days was for general attendance.

In addition to professional supply and demand, CISCE is also a scientific exhibition, which fully develops each chain from upper, middle and lower reaches to horizontal services, and puts together the most advanced products and technologies of these enterprises to form a future industrial chain panorama, said Lin.