CIFTIS Opens in Beijing With Services, Not Scaffolding, as China's New Export Pitch
China's annual services-trade fair opened at the renovated Shougang park in Beijing on September 9, with 1,830-plus exhibitors from 90 countries and a first-of-its-kind 'China Services' hall. The message from the capital: the next chapter of Chinese exports is AI, healthcare, finance and expertise — not just goods.
The China International Fair for Trade in Services, better known as CIFTIS, opened its 2026 edition at Shougang Park — the converted steel mill on Beijing's western edge — on September 9, running through September 13. The scale is the headline: more than 1,830 exhibitors from about 90 countries and international organizations, 473 of them Fortune 500 or industry-leading firms, with over 200 new products and technologies set for release, many of them global debuts. For the first time, the fair has a dedicated "China Services" exhibition area, a deliberate rebrand of what the country is selling to the world.
From goods to services
The economic logic on display is straightforward. China's goods-trade dominance is mature and contested — tariffs and supply-chain diversification have eaten into the margin — while services trade has crossed the one-trillion-dollar mark, and officials describe it as the next growth story of an "opening-up" policy in its fifteenth five-year-plan cycle. State coverage of the fair emphasizes robots on duty, AI woven into service scenarios, smart healthcare and digital trade — the sectors Beijing wants associated with the phrase "China Services," the way "Made in China" once stood for everything else.
One CIFTIS exhibit hall features a giant "ESCO Global" service-ecosystem sculpture, the fair's visual shorthand for the industry ecosystem it wants to imagine.
The fair is also staging a one-stop "going global" services desk, packaging legal, financial and logistics support for Chinese firms expanding abroad — with more than 40 roadshows planned to promote Chinese services internationally. Officials' talking point, repeated across state coverage, is that the fair marks a shift "from product exports to service exports."
It is the opening of a fair, not the signing of treaties — but the emphasis is legible from outside. As Beijing prepares for a policy cycle in which growth must come from somewhere, the sectors showcased at Shougang Park this week are the ones it has chosen to talk about.