138th Canton Fair opens, welcoming global traders

Guangzhou: The 138th Canton Fair kicked off in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province on Wednesday, and will run through November 4 in three phases. As China’s key trade fair, the Canton Fair has long served as a barometer and weathervane for China’s foreign trade.

This edition started with several notable firsts. From the perspective of exhibitors, this edition features over 10,000 high-quality enterprises, a record high, accounting for 34 percent of export exhibitors. The fair will showcase 353,000 smart products in total, the Global Times learned from the organizer.

In terms of exhibition themes, the fair introduced a dedicated smart medical zone for the first time, attracting 47 companies with surgical robots, intelligent monitoring and wearable devices, better highlighting China’s advanced medical products and technologies, the organizer said.

The service robot zone continues to attract global buyers, the Global Times observed in the exhibition area.

A total of 46 leading industry firms exhibited embodied robots and robot dogs.
Guo Wei, CMO of Shenzhen Intelligence.Ally Technology Co., Ltd. (Allybot), a commercial intelligent robot company, told the Global Times at the Canton Fair that they had secured some 2,000 export orders for their commercial cleaning robots in the first half of the year after having attended the Canton Fair for the first time in April, with exports maintaining growth in the second half.

“On the first day of the Canton Fair, we garnered potential orders exceeding 1 million yuan ($140,311),” Guo said, adding the company expects a 300 percent year-on-year export growth for the full year.

Abdelhamid Yousef, a buyer and distributor from Miami, Florida, was attracted by the Allybot’s new products launch ceremony at the Canton Fair.

“This is my first time at the Canton Fair, and I’m looking to procure robots that can deliver food and packages inside buildings,” Yousef told the Global Times.

Despite uncertainties in US tariffs, Yousef believes Chinese robots still hold strong market potential in the US and he said he will place some orders right away. “China’s robotics industry is way ahead with high-quality products, so I’m happy to do business with China.”

Guo said their main export markets include Europe, North America, East Asia and Southeast Asia. “The US market is largely unaffected by tariffs, only the export delivery process might become more cumbersome. However, with inflation and rising labor costs abroad, demand for intelligent cleaning is increasing.”

Overseas demand for delivery and cleaning robots is high due to elevated labor costs, Bi Cheng, a manager of the Brand Department at Shenzhen Pudu Technology Co., told the Global Times on Wednesday at the Canton Fair.

“In the future, by combining AI, robots will handle packing and unpacking in factories. The Canton Fair gathers buyers with real needs, and we are here hoping to seize business opportunities,” Bi said.

Wu Jian, Overseas Sales Manager of MagicLab Robotics Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., told the Global Times on Wednesday that their robots and robotic dogs are mainly exported to Europe and the US, with applications in factory handling and on-site inspections.

Exports already account for nearly half the company’s revenue, with overseas schools and Amazon purchasing their robots for application development, Wu said.

In addition to delivery, cleaning and inspection robots, collaborative robot exports are also rising, Li Jiaxian, Brand Manager of Dobot Technology, told the Global Times on Wednesday at the Canton Fair.

Their collaborative robots have been sold to over 100 countries and regions worldwide, with exports in 2024 growing over 50 percent. In the first half of 2025, commercial service robot revenue surged 165.5 percent year-on-year, overseas revenue grew 8.4 percent, and overseas income now comprises 52.4 percent of total revenue, Li said. –The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item