The second China-CEEC Expo & International Consumer Goods Fair and the 23rd 
China Zhejiang Investment & Trade Symposium was held from June 8 to June 11 
in the eastern coastal city of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, east China, according 
to Zhejiang Provincial Commerce Department.

Co-organized by the country's commerce ministry and the local provincial 
government, the event featured trade exhibitions, investment talks and 
people-to-people exchanges. Against the global COVID-19 epidemic and economic 
recession, Zhejiang and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries once 
again joined hands, integrating economy with people-to-people exchanges and 
giving equal emphasis to trade and investment. The two sides carried out 
all-round, high-quality and multi-level cooperation.

Zhejiang, located on the southeast coast of China, has made great efforts to 
build a high-level open platform represented by the China-CEEC Expo in its bid 
to become a central hub in boosting bilateral cooperation. 

Leveraging the bilateral cooperation mechanism, Zhejiang has been dedicated in 
serving the development of the Belt and Road Initiative. A new development 
pattern is taking shape as Zhejiang seeks to lift the bilateral cooperation and 
local opening-up to new levels.

As China's only national-level institutional exhibition facing CEE, this year's 
expo focused on building a new pattern and sharing new opportunities. 

Three exhibitions were set up specifically to showcase CEE countries, 
international consumer goods and imported goods, with a total area of about 
200,000 square meters. More than 2,000 CEE exhibitors and over 6,000 Chinese 
purchasers attended the event. 

During the four-day event, more than 20 important events were held to 
promote closer ties with CEE in the fields of economy, trade, science and 
technology, health, business associations and so on.

The expo is not only an important joint achievement following the China-CEEC 
Leaders Summit, but also a concrete action to promote the bilateral economic 
cooperation, trade exchange and high-quality development between China and CEE. 

Since its establishment in 2012, the cooperation mechanism between China and 
CEEC has achieved fruitful results. Compared with nine years ago, the bilateral 
trade volume between China and CEEC increased by nearly 85 percent, exceeding 
100 billion U.S. dollars for the first time in 2020. Two-way trips have 
increased nearly fourfold, and the China-Europe freight train service has 
covered most CEE countries.

As a vanguard of cooperation and development between China and CEE, Zhejiang 
has taken many measures to overcome the adverse effects of the epidemic, with 
its economic cooperation, trade exchanges with CEEC bucking the downward trend. 

In the first quarter of this year, the total trade volume between Zhejiang and 
CEEC reached 3.96 billion U.S. dollars, up 42.5 percent year on year. While sea 
transport is blocked and air transport capacity is limited, the China-Europe 
freight train services starting from Zhejiang's Yiwu city to Europe has become 
an important link connecting economic and trade exchanges between Europe and 
Asia. By end-March, CEE countries had set up 514 enterprises in Zhejiang, with 
contracted foreign investment of 1.1 billion U.S. dollars.

Zhejiang has also made full use of the benefits of China-CEEC cooperation 
mechanism by linking it with the development of the China-CEEC economic 
cooperation demonstration zone, Zhejiang pilot free trade zone and the Zhejiang 
investment & trade symposium. Thus a new cooperation mechanism and the docking 
of new policies with CEE countries have been established. During the expo, the 
e-commerce cooperation and dialogue mechanism between China and CEEC was 
launched to facilitate CEE enterprises' export to China.

In the next five years, Zhejiang will strive to import 20 billion U.S. dollars 
of goods from CEE countries with two-way investment exceeding 1.5 billion U.S. 
dollars. Zhejiang is expected to become a central hub of China-CEEC 
cooperation, an important bridge for CEE countries to enter the Chinese world 
market, and an important window to showcase China's development model to CEE 
countries.

Source: Zhejiang Provincial Commerce Department