YINCHUAN, Sept. 22 – The sixth China-Arab States Expo opened on September 21 in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
The four-day event draws the participation of guests from more than 50 countries including Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
The offline exhibition area at the expo is nearly 40,000 square meters, and more than 1,000 domestic and foreign enterprises have participated in the exhibition, the organizer introduced.
First held in 2013, the China-Arab States Expo has become an important platform for China and Arab states to promote pragmatic cooperation and advance high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.
At this expo, the state-owned enterprise (SOEs) exhibition, composed of 10 enterprises, made its debut, 9 of which were among the world’s top 500 enterprises. This area fully displays the cooperation and achievements of central enterprises in international economic and trade, traditional energy, new energy, and transportation. Among them, the Mecca Metro in Saudi Arabia, the EMU in the UAE, and the Mohammed VI Tangier Science and Technology City sand table in Morocco are on display for the first time, attracting a lot of attention at home and abroad.
The state-owned enterprise (SOEs) exhibition area
Another clean energy exhibition that leads the world’s hot topics includes an indoor exhibition area, involving technologies or equipment such as power grid, nuclear energy, energy storage, and hydrogen energy. 18 enterprises including State Grid and China General Nuclear Power Group have already present; the outdoor exhibition area mainly displays new energy vehicles, including passenger vehicles, off-road vehicles, engineering vehicles, etc.
The clean energy exhibition area
China is now the Arab states’ largest trading partner. China-Arab trade volume almost doubled from the 2012 level to 431.4 billion U.S. dollars last year. In the first half of this year, trade between China and the Arab states reached 199.9 billion dollars.
In 2022, China’s direct investment in Arab states increased by 2.62 billion U.S. dollars, up 13 percent year on year, while the Arab states added 1.05 billion U.S. dollars in investment in China, an increase of nearly nine times year on year, Vice Minister of Commerce Li Fei said at the opening ceremony of this year’s expo.
Joint efforts should be made to consolidate and develop the bilateral relations between China and Arab states, emphasized Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Malki, assistant secretary general of the League of Arab States. “In particular, we should further synergize with the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, which coincide with the vision of the Arab world.”
The China-Arab States Expo, over the past ten years, has attracted over 400,000 participants and 6,000 enterprises from 112 countries and regions, who signed more than 1,200 cooperation projects in areas such as modern agriculture, high technologies and biomedicine. At present, the 2023 expo has produced a total of 403 cooperation results, with a planned investment and trade of 170.97 billion yuan, in which the signed projects involve modern agriculture, clean energy, medical health, digital economy, tourism cooperation and the like.
