KASHGAR, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The 15th Kashgar-Central and South Asia Commodity Fair kicked off on Friday in Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road town in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The five-day fair has attracted a total of 181 enterprises from 40 countries and regions, including Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Ghana, as well as 1,120 Chinese companies and 26 overseas business associations, according to local authorities.

This year's fair has a 40,000-square-meter exhibition space that is divided into three key sections: investment cooperation, international trade and domestic trade. The event focuses on business matchmaking in sectors such as biomedicine, cultural tourism, agriculture, cotton and textiles industries.

The fair was first held in 2005 and has to date seen the participation of 38,000 enterprises from 56 countries and regions, generating cumulative trade deals exceeding 480 billion yuan (about 67.25 billion U.S. dollars).

Kashgar's foreign trade has surged in recent years, with its total import and export value coming in at 99.44 billion yuan in 2024, which was up 18.8 percent year on year. The figure accounted for a record high of nearly 23 percent of Xinjiang's total foreign trade last year.