China boosts support for Africa’s least-developed countries to attend November expo

The upcoming 2nd edition of China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) will see higher participation from the least-developed countries, especially from Africa, in part in an attempt to showcase China’s resilience against trade barriers from the United States and other trade partners.
The organizers of the CISCE that kicks off in Beijing on 26 November have said they plan to expand the scale of the venue also by providing more help to institutions and companies from the African Union. “We will focus on expanding participation from the least-developed countries while providing free exhibiting opportunities and support to African exhibitors to help developing countries promote their businesses,” Yu Yi, head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) office, announced recently. More than 600 companies are expected to participate in the five-day venue that would mark a 20% increase in businesses from the inaugural expo last year.
While noting that almost half of the roughly 190 foreign participants will be US or European companies, the CCPIT emphasized that the participating developing countries, including Ethiopia, the DRC, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Morocco and Ghana, will get extra attention. Over the past six years, many foreign and even some Chinese companies have been moving some of their production outside China to avoid tariffs and geopolitical uncertainties. To alleviate the pressures of the expanding trade barriers from the West and the overall increasingly hostile trade environment, Beijing has been increasingly cultivating its relations with neighboring countries and developing nations, not least from Africa.