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High-Tech Expo Underpins Capital's Development

It's Back, Better than Ever

At least 30 executives from the world's top-500 enterprises are expected to participate in the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Beijing Mayor's International Entrepreneur Consultant's Conference during the Ninth China Beijing International High-tech Expo (CHITEC) that will open on Mary 23 at the China National Exhibition Centre in Beijing.

CHITEC will continue through May 27 at various venues around the city, including the Great Hall of the People where the mayor's conference is expected to be held.

A record number of the world's top business executives, whose names would be found on any big business Who's Who list, are expected to discuss high-technologies, finance and modern services with Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan. All the executives are considered industrial and commercial giants with enormous influence in their own fields, whose frank advice and general guidance are considered indispensable to those guiding Beijing's economy. The mayor's meeting is considered the most important CHITEC activity and it strongly underpins the capital's repaid development.

But CHITEC will also be attended by foreign delegations, domestic and foreign high-tech industry leaders and their sales/marketing teams and many others looking to take advantage of Beijing and China's broad prospects in the fields of science and technology and the brand effect of the CHITEC.

There are any number of things that set CHITEC apart from other trade expositions.

The first is broad and high-ranking international participation. More than 50 delegations have committed to attend this year's expo from the fields of science and technology and commercial circles from the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative regions and Taiwan.

Among high-ranking leaders of international organizations expected to attend are: Undersecretary-General of the United Nations Kim Hak-Su; Institute of International Finance (IIF) Chairman of the Board Josef Ackermann; ASEAN Deputy Secretary-General Nicholas Tandi Dammen; OPEC President Edmund Daukoru; government delegations led by ministers from France, Australia, Brazil and Belgium; delegations of international financial institutions, including US delegations representing venture capitalists and the NASDAQ Stock Market and a delegation from the London Stock Exchange.

World-renowned economists, including the 1993 and 2005 Nobel Prize laureates for economics Robert W. Fogel, Phd, of the University of Chicago, and Robert J. Aumann, PhD, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the associate editor and chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, are scheduled to attend.

Another thing that sets CHITEC apart is that it gives top enterprises, domestic and foreign, a chance to show their "best" and high-tech products for the first time in China. By April, more than 90 percent of CHITEC's exhibition space had been booked, with enterprises such as Samsung, LG Electronics, Nokia, Panasonic and Fuji-Xerox seizing on the most eye-catching booths. These foreign giants will be joined by domestic "backbone" high-tech enterprises such as Lenovo, HiSense, Changhong, Beijing Orient and Capital Steel Corporation, who will display their most recently developed products, especially those based on their own proprietary intellectual property rights.

The "Brazil-China Exhibition," whose Brazilian Government-backed delegation will be the largest foreign delegation at CHITEC, will feature more than 40 enterprises involved in the oil and natural gas, minerals and metallurgy, agricultural, electricity-generating, telecommunications, food and biomedicine industries. They are expected to show advanced technologies and products in such areas as animal genetics, biotechnology, hydropower, renewable fuels and mineral exploitation. High-tech enterprises from the Republic of Korea will also take part, with dozens of enterprises brought by the Seoul Municipal Government and Korea International Technology Research Institute participating in CHITEC. The Taibei Computer Association and Taibei World Trade Center will continue the Taiwan region's long-time participation in CHITEC, featuring such famous high-tech enterprises as Powerchip, ASUS and Gigabyte, who will display their leading high-tech products.

The third aspect of CHITEC is its practical nature as an expo. Of the dozens of overseas delegations participating in the event, most will represent enterprises. CHITEC gives them a high-quality opportunity to make business connections, to engage in extensive communications and to negotiate with business leaders from domestic science and technology enterprises from various Chinese provinces and municipalities.

The nearly 500 entrepreneurs from the Brazilian delegation will engage in additional contacts during activities with their Chinese counterparts on the sidelines of the conference.

More than 50 IT and telecom companies from Europe will hold trade talks concerning specific projects with corresponding Chinese enterprises. High-tech enterprises and science and technology parks organized by provinces and municipalities will attend CHITEC to engage in comprehensive efforts to promote their development environments and projects and to attract business and investment that accord with their respective regional resources and advantages.

Scientific and technological economic and trade projects available are being compiled and will be featured on the CHITEC Web site and in a project catalog so that these projects can easily be accessed, understood and achieve investment.

An improvement in its informatization levels is another important aspect of the Ninth CHITEC. The official CHITEC Web site has been reformatted, and it will provide online support for the organization of activities and service provisions for the first time. It will provide a new level of personalized service to exhibitors, professional visitors, participating delegations, whether from home or abroad, and to enterprises attending trade talks and forums and to the numerous news media organizations which are expected to attend. The "CHITEC Virtual Exhibition Hall" will serve as a new channel for publicizing CHITEC, another CHITEC first.

Negotiations and promotions, economic and trade talks will be arranged into eight sessions of negotiations and promotions of different levels and different areas. They include: "Talks on International Investment Projects," which will focus on linking up bilateral and multilateral trade and investment projects from home and overseas; the "Promotion of Olympics-related Market Development" and "Promotion of Service Access to the Beijing Olympics" sponsored by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG); the "Promotion of Agricultural High-tech Projects," featuring space-based mutation breeding and ecological fertilizers; the "Promotion of Investment and Cooperation in China's Telecom Value-Added Industry," which provides links to projects and opportunities for content and service providers and investors in China's telecom value-added industry during the transitional period; the "Promotion of New Products and New Technologies in China's Informatization Construction," which aims to promote the most up-to-date technological results in e-government and e-commerce; the "Introduction of Overseas Investment Environment to Chinese Enterprises," which will focus on China's "going global" strategy, its implementation and content; and the "Promotion by Various Provinces and Municipalities," which will provide services for various provinces and municipalities, allowing them to tout their local development strategies, investment opportunities and high-tech projects. On those occasions, delegations of domestic and overseas governments and industrial and commercial circles as well as high-tech enterprises will hold face-to-face negotiations. This will serve as a trading platform for China's high-tech industries to develop regional cooperation and go global.