This year’s China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), which is going to take place in Beijing from Sept. 2 to 7, will have a special pavilion for digital services for the first time, according to a press briefing held by the State Council Information Office of China on August 27.

It will also include a forum on the trends and latest developments in digital trade and conferences that will bring participants closer into new technologies, business forms and models and fruits in the field.

The theme of the 2021 CIFTIS is “Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development”, said Yang Jinbai, vice mayor of Beijing, who disclosed that the exhibition area will be divided into comprehensive exhibition and thematic exhibition.

The comprehensive exhibition area of the CIFTIS will include an exhibition of China’s achievements in services trade, special exhibition zones for foreign countries, Chinese provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and special administrative regions, as well as a pavilion for digital services, and these exhibitions will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, according to Yang.

Targeted at enterprises, the thematic exhibition of the CIFTIS, which will be staged at the Shougang Park in Shijingshan district of Beijing, covers eight subjects including telecommunications, computer and information services, financial services, culture and tourism services, education services, sports services, supply chain and business services, engineering consulting and construction services as well as health services.

The planned exhibition area of this year’s CIFTIS is 20,000 square meters more than that of the 2020 event.

More than 10,000 companies from 153 countries and regions have signed up for the 2021 CIFTIS whether via online or offline platforms, compared with 148 countries and regions last year. The number of companies that will exhibit their products at the CIFTIS offline has risen 6 percent year on year. The proportions of foreign companies and enterprises on the Fortune Global 500 list have both exceeded those of the event last year.

Five summit forums as well as 119 thematic forums and conferences centering around 12 trends in services trade and hot topics like digital economy and digital trade development are expected to be held during this year’s CIFTIS.

The five summit forums, which will be held by China’s Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Development Research Center of the State Council, World Tourism Cities Federation and other parties, will cover topics including high-quality development of services trade, openness and cooperation, new digital ecology and revitalization of world tourism, and allow participants to conduct in-depth discussions on strategic and structural problems of global trade in services, according to Zhang Haocheng, head of the conference organization team of the executive committee of the CIFTIS.

The thematic forums and conferences will focus on digital economy, digital trade planning and other subjects closely related to the theme of the CIFTIS, Zhang added.

During this year’s CIFTIS, over 30 reports, standards, and indexes will be released, and more than 10 alliances, think tanks and platforms in such fields as international public procurement, food supply chain, finance, traditional Chinese medicine, ecological environment and other industries will be established.

The CIFTIS is a comprehensive and state-level exhibition and trading platform dedicated to trade in services with a global reach, said Wang Bingnan, vice minister of commerce in China.

Holding the 2021 CIFTIS as promised shows China’s determination to promote higher-level opening-up and its sense of responsibility as a major country for facilitating international anti-epidemic cooperation and world economic and trade recovery, Wang pointed out.

The preparation work for the event is going well on the whole, including that for summits, forums, exhibitions, epidemic prevention and control, publicity as well as safety precautions, according to Wang.

This year’s CIFTIS will also include a specially designed exhibition of China’s achievements in trade in services over the past five years, Wang said. From 2016 to 2020, China witnessed remarkable achievements in services trade and further solidified its position as the world’s second largest country in the sector. During the period, the country’s imports and exports of services totaled $3.6 trillion, up 29.7 percent from that between 2011 and 2015.