Trading places in the future
April is not the time of year for a quiet cup of tea in most five-star hotel lobby lounges across the Pearl River Delta. This is the month when buyers from all over the world arrive in droves for the country's biggest annual trade shows.
They will meet their suppliers mostly at convention and exhibition centres in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou, but the real negotiating often takes place at the hotels. If they end up signing multimillion-dollar orders for widgets or shoes before they leave, then the temporary inconvenience here will probably be well worth it.
Viewpoints on this are starting to depend increasingly, of course, on where 'here' is. Hong Kong is still the most popular place in the region to attend international conventions and exhibitions. It is hard to get exact figures, but tourism officials believe that as many as 3 million visitors come to the city annually for that purpose.
The opening of the AsiaWorld-Expo near the airport provides yet another world-class venue, and ought to bring in many more visitors each year for such high-profile events as the Asian Aerospace expo, which it has snatched away from Singapore.
It is hard, however, to have much confidence in Hong Kong's longer-term future as a hub for trade-related events. There are no figures available for how many visitors attend trade fairs in Guangdong. Yet there is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that Hong Kong is gradually pricing itself out of the market for attracting international visitors to trade-related events.
As usual, reasons for this begin with the property market: it has become too expensive to invest in new hotels. Room rates have grown exponentially higher than those within an hour's drive across the border. Restaurant prices are also shooting up in tandem with extortionate rent rises over the past year, while bars and karaoke parlours are expensive enough to make disbelievers of expense-claim administrators at head office.
Organising trade-related events, sorry to say, is not rocket science. Sure, Hong Kong has all the advantages of a convertible currency and a strong legal system. But it's reasonable to expect that it won't be long before the mainland's services and other software catches up to the hardware of the monumental exhibition centres built over the past two years in Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Guangzhou.
Yes, I have heard the argument that all these venues could actually complement each other. I look forward to seeing it put to the test this month, when the buyers' services company Global Sources holds its first big China-sourcing fairs at AsiaWorld-Expo.
That will occur in the same two weeks as the 99th Canton Fair in Guangzhou's Pazhou Centre and the Spring Electronics Fair in Wan Chai. The latter begins the day after Shenzhen finishes its own China Electronics Fair.
There are also two other events happening around the same time, in Guangdong, that will bear watching. China Shoetec, the premier show for a municipality that produces one out of every three pairs of shoes sold worldwide, will be held in Dongguan from April 21-24, while Shenzhen hosts the International Underwear Exhibition starting on April 19. Don't laugh: it's a US$60 billion business on the mainland. That's what I told my wife, anyway.
Anthony Lawrance is a Hong Kong-based publisher
