From shopping carts to vast market: The CIIE in everyday life

On the fourth floor of a mall on Nanjing East Road, Shanghai's busiest pedestrian shopping street, sits a small bazaar stocked with products from more than 20 countries and regions. 

There is a free tasting counter at the entrance – Iranian saffron, Italian canned tuna, coffee from Timor-Leste – and shoppers are invited to try before buying. A bottle of Irish tonic water goes for 9.9 yuan (about $1.49). A retiree who used to work at a design institute comes most weeks, buys a New Zealand yogurt and sits for a while. A shopper surnamed Ma restocks Australian canola oil whenever the bottle at home runs out.

Nearly all of it first appeared at the China International Import Expo (CIIE), which was held across the city at the National Exhibition and Convention Center, a vast complex shaped like a four-leaf clover. 

Nine editions in, the world's first import-themed national expo is measured less in square meters than in what lands on Shanghai dinner tables. Products that debuted in its booths keep turning up in ordinary shops – what the expo calls "turning exhibits into goods."

From the booth to the shelf

Start in the fresh-food aisle. In the first nine months of this year, Norway shipped 98,376 tonnes of salmon to China, 42% more than a year earlier – enough, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council, to make China its second-largest salmon market. Chile did its part with cherries: of roughly 550,000 tonnes exported last season, per the Chilean Cherry Committee, more than nine in every 10 were bound for China, arriving in as little as 23 days by direct sea route. The volume showed up on price tags, with wholesale prices falling by as much as a quarter.

Medicine has taken a quieter version of the same route. Boston Scientific, which first exhibited in 2019, has since had 24 products it debuted at the expo approved in China. Its intravascular ultrasound system, once purely imported, is now made in Shanghai's Lingang area, and shipped back out to other markets. In 2025, Sanofi brought aficamten, a medication for heart conditions, to its global debut at the expo, and won Chinese approval the following month, ahead of Europe and the United States. 

This year, Sanofi will present the global debut of rovadicitinib, a Class 1 new drug developed in China for myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow disorder. Class 1 is China's category for a drug never marketed anywhere before.

From goods to industry

What China imports is changing, too. Imports grew by 22.3% in the first three quarters of this year, according to the General Administration of Customs, outpacing exports for seven straight months, and in September they passed 2 trillion yuan in a single month for the first time. Much of that is factories buying – imports of memory components alone rose by 150% – as firms stock up on the parts that go into what they make and sell.

For foreign suppliers, the expo has become a route into that chain rather than just the retail shelf. Jungheinrich, the German intralogistics firm, has exhibited at every edition; over those years, the annual growth of its automated warehousing projects has climbed from under 20% to more than 50%, and the share of locally sourced parts in its equipment from 51% to 80%. Equipment developed at its Qingpu plant now ships to more than 40 countries in the Jungheinrich network, and its Hongqiao operations have grown into the group's second global software center and a global OEM center.

Schneider Electric, another nine-edition veteran, counts China as its second-largest market and one of its four research bases. Late last month, its Xiamen Xiang'an industrial park went into production – the company's largest medium-voltage electrical equipment base, built to lift capacity by 60% once fully running.

A bigger table

When the doors open on Thursday, the ninth CIIE will be the largest yet, under its long-standing theme "New Era, Shared Future." 

Some 162 countries, regions and international organizations are taking part; Canada and Sri Lanka are the guest countries of honor, with Moldova, Romania and the UNDP among the first-timers. 

On the business side, a record 4,142 overseas companies have signed up, and for the first time more than 300 of the world's 500 biggest companies and industry leaders will be there. More than 480 items will make their global, Asian or Chinese debut. 

The total exhibition area has exceeded 440,000 square meters for the first time. Among the participants, US companies have booked more than 50,000 square meters, securing the largest exhibition area for the eighth consecutive year. 

Running alongside the CIIE is a key component of the expo, the Hongqiao International Economic Forum, which is held under the theme "Stability and Cooperation: Building an Open World Economy Together."