Since its inception in 2018, the China International Import Expo (CIIE) has been widely regarded as an international public good for the world to share.
The Medical Equipment and Healthcare Products exhibition area at CIIE has become an important platform for global pharmaceutical enterprises to explore the Chinese market and share development opportunities in China.
Last year, nearly 350 enterprises from 33 countries and regions joined the area at the fourth CIIE. Among them were more than 70 Fortune Global 500 companies in the medical and pharmaceutical industry occupying a combined exhibition area of 70,000 square metres.
Multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Novartis, MSD, Sanofi and GSK stepped onstage to bring the latest products, technologies and services to the massive market.
The exhibition area featured 135 technology and product debuts, the most of all the other areas last year. The world’s first portable sterilising and deodorising instrument and the world’s first digital surgical platform for bronchial diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer were big hits during the fourth CIIE.
"It is important to have opportunities like the CIIE to showcase breakthrough medicines on which we're doing many clinical trials around the world and here in China," Anna Van Acker, Senior Vice-President of MSD, said during the fourth CIIE.
In a recent interview Jean-Christophe Pointeau, President of Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group China, praised the CIIE as an ideal platform for promoting exchanges and win-win cooperation. He also noted Pfizer, which has participated in every edition of the CIIE since 2019, has signed up for the upcoming expo and is hard at work preparing for it.
With the CIIE a symbol of China's opening-up, multinational companies are riding the growth wave of the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry.
According to data released by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Medicines and Health Products, China's import value of medical devices hit US$44.68 billion in 2021, up 8.31 per cent year-on-year.
Per the tariff adjustment plan released by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council, medicine and medical devices such as radium chloride injections, intracranial thrombectomy stents and artificial joints have had lowered and even zero tariffs attached since the start of 2022.
As scheduled, the fifth CIIE will be held from November 5 to 10.
The rehab and elderly care subsection will return to the Medical Equipment & Healthcare Products exhibition area. The subsection, which is expected to occupy 4,000 sqm this year, has attracted many major companies, including Sivantos Group, a hearing aid manufacturer, Bewatec, a German supplier of hardware and software solutions for hospitals and Ossur, an Iceland-based producer of non-invasive equipment for orthopaedics.
To date, more than 80 per cent of the planned business exhibition space has been reserved and more than 260 Fortune Global 500 companies and industry leaders will attend the expo.
Now is the time to seize the myriad opportunities in the Chinese market through the CIIE, be sure to sign up for the fifth edition this year!
