Two Mega-Fairs, One Pitch: China Courts the World With Services and Robots
Two national-level trade fairs — CIFTIS in Beijing and CIFIT in Xiamen — closed a week of courting foreign buyers and investors, with state media promoting them as one story: 'two expos, China's opportunity.' The tech on show, from computing-power services to humanoid robots, marks how China now sells itself.
Two of China's national-level trade fairs closed their latest editions this week — the CIFTIS services fair in Beijing and the CIFIT investment fair in Xiamen — and state media's framing of the pair, "two expos, China's opportunity seen in two halls," was itself the fourth-biggest trending topic on Weibo. Read together, they are a progress report on how China is trying to court foreign business at a moment when trade tensions run high: one fair selling China's services to the world, the other selling China as a place to invest.
The Beijing fair, CIFTIS — the China International Fair for Trade in Services, held this year on the former Shougang steelworks site — put more than 100 new products and services on first release, and for the first time set up a "China Service" showcase: 140 case studies spanning 12 service-trade sectors, from logistics to creative industries. State broadcaster CCTV's news anchor segment walked through the case area for its Weibo followers, presenting the showcases as the seedbed of future "China Service" brands. The technologically laden end of the fair drew the most coverage: state media highlights centered on computing-power services and humanoid robots, with CCTV reporting that "embodied AI" supply chains used the fair for refined, real-scenario launches rather than concept displays — a signal of where Chinese exhibitors believe their advantage now lies. The fair also opened a public day, free on reservation, a gesture at making trade policy feel like a day out.
Xiamen's CIFIT, the China International Fair for Investment and Trade, closed its 26th edition the same week after four days in which, per the official count, more than 100,000 attendees from 129 countries and regions took part in person. The anchor demographic was foreign businesspeople, and the fair's own publicity embraced the social-media idiom: the event, one anchor put it, became a "扩列现场" for foreign merchants — slang from youth internet culture for swapping contacts to grow one's friends list. Provincial booths jostled to translate local industry into investment pitches; The Paper's report from the Jiangxi pavilion showed nearly a hundred products from 29 companies doing exactly that, under a slogan — "walk in front, strive to be first" — that reads like a provincial growth target pressed into decoration.
For an international reader, the pair of fairs is a window onto China's current economic sales pitch. The services fair's emphasis — computing power, AI, robot supply chains — is the country's case that it now exports advanced services rather than only goods, and the first-time "China Service" branding is an explicit attempt to do for services what "Made in China" did for manufacturing. The investment fair's pitch, meanwhile, is openness as reassurance: 129 countries' worth of dealmaking staged precisely as foreign firms weigh how exposed to remain to the Chinese market. That both stories were promoted as a single trending topic — "two fairs, one opportunity" — is itself the message: Beijing and Xiamen, services and capital, presented as one open door.
Whether the door convinces its audience is the open question the week leaves. The visitor counts are official, the slogans polished; the measure that matters is what gets signed in the months after the halls empty.