NANNING: This is the eighth straight year that Malaysian entrepreneur Chai Kean King has attended the annual China-ASEAN Expo to expand his business in China.
For this year’s expo, which opened Friday in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, Chai has brought bird’s nests, coffee and other Malaysian specialty products made by his food company, hoping to captivate expo visitors and find more business partners. Enterprises from over 40 countries and regions are participating in this year’s China-ASEAN Expo, which is held both online and offline and boasts a total exhibition area of 102,000 square meters.
For Chai, attending the expo for eight years in a row has not always been easy. Last year, he traveled from Malaysia to China to take part in the event despite COVID-19-induced travel restrictions and quarantine measures.
“We spared no effort to attend last year’s expo because we had found many of our business partners at the event,” he said. “We have sold a lot of our products at previous editions of the expo and have further tapped into the Chinese market through this platform.” Chai’s growing business in China mirrors the booming trade and strong bilateral ties between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) over the past decades. Since China and ASEAN established dialogue relations in 1991, the two sides have seen bilateral trade skyrocket from 8.36 billion U.S. dollars to 685.28 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, an increase of over 80 times, according to Chinese customs data. – Agencies
