Canton Fair | Ho Iat Seng makes future plans with Guangzhou officials

Chief Executive (CE) Ho Iat Seng has met with Guangzhou city officials to exchange views on Covid-19 prevention and control work, as well as closely work on financial, education and medical services.
The meeting took place in Guangdong’s capital city prior to the Canton Fair.
The fair, formally known as the 130th China Import and Export Fair, is co-hosted by the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and the provincial government Guangdong.
Ho attended the opening ceremony on Friday where Premier Li Keqiang delivered a keynote speech.
While in Guangzhou, the CE met with Zhang Shuofu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Guangdong Provincial Committee and secretary of the CPC Guangzhou Municipal Committee, and Wen Guohui, deputy secretary of the CPC Guangzhou Municipal Committee and mayor of Guangzhou.
The CE thanked the officials for Guangzhou’s long-term support for Macau’s development and pointed out that Guangzhou is an important gateway for the whole country and a transport hub, adding that Macau and Guangzhou enjoy a huge potential for cooperation.
Ho highlighted that Macau has made more effort to take advantage of the opportunities available by the recently established Guangdong-Macau In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, as well as to accelerate Macau’s economic diversification. The CE said that Macau was looking forward to working more closely with Guangzhou, in order to serve the country’s strategic needs, while strengthening innovation in cooperative mechanisms, in order to extend ties in science and technological innovation, traditional Chinese medicine, and social welfare, among others.
In order to press ahead with closer and pragmatic cooperation, officials from the two sides also discussed establishing a mechanism for regular meetings.
The 130th Canton Fair began on October 15, and for the first time, it was held simultaneously in online and offline format, attracting a record number of products thanks to the new platform and initiative.
The five-day grand exhibition remains the largest physical exhibition in the world at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, covering a physical area of 400,000 square meters with 7,795 companies and 19,181 booths in 51 exhibition sections.
Among them, 10,837 stands are presented by brands, accounting for 57% of the total physical exhibition.
Twenty-six thousand companies also joined the fair’s impressive online showcase, currently featuring a record 2.78 million products, including 860,000 new products. Staff reporter