China's Import Expo Hits Records as the Country Pitches Itself as a 'Super Buyer'
The ninth CIIE opened in Shanghai with record exhibitor numbers and 480 world-first products — the annual set-piece of China's effort to be known as the world's market, not just its factory.
China's ninth China International Import Expo opened in Shanghai on Thursday, and the arithmetic of this year's edition is the story: 162 countries and regions sent exhibitors, 4,142 foreign firms are showing, the venue crossed 440,000 square metres for the first time, and more than 480 exhibits are world, Asian or Chinese debuts — a record. More than 300 Fortune 500 and industry-leading companies are attending, and over 2,000 firms are here for the first time. State broadcaster CCTV framed the week with a telling coincidence: the Canton Fair, China's export showcase, closed in Guangzhou the day before the import expo opened in Shanghai. "China is a super seller, and also a super buyer," the anchor said, a post liked nearly 300 times.
The exhibits do the arguing for the policy better than the speeches. On The Paper's tour of the halls, a reporter played table tennis against an AI machine (its report is here) that completes perception and decision in 0.3 seconds, built to test where embodied intelligence actually stands. In the same halls: a Bosch heat-pump display aimed at China's home-renovation market, and GLP-1 weight-loss drugs shown off as "black tech" exhibits still awaiting Chinese drug approval.
The aging of China's population has become a selling point in its own right — Baidu's top story on the fair was a segment on how the expo is making elder care more comfortable.
The economic framing that spread on Chinese social media was not triumphalist but bookkeeping. One finance commentator's post, the most-discussed analysis under the hashtag, argued that "super buyer" status is not just about volume: foreign brands keep bringing debuts here because the market is large, layered and predictable, and import competition is exactly what pushes Chinese firms up the value chain. A CCTV explainer thread made the same point from the consumer side: imported snacks, cosmetics and appliances now sit in ordinary shopping carts, and the expo is the annual ritual behind that normalcy.
What an outsider might miss is the sequencing. China built its name as the world's factory, and the fair is the state's nine-year-old instrument for rebalancing the story — deliberately courting the world's goods, not just shipping its own. Nine editions in, the measure of success has quietly shifted from ceremony to repeat attendance: the exhibitors China calls "perfect attendance students" keep coming back, and the new-debut count keeps rising.