The CIIE Bureau held an online promotional event on March 30 to attract more Central and East European countries to participate the fourth expo and further boost their exports to China.

During the event, the Bulgarian-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Development Agency of Serbia and VICI Group signed contracts to participate in the fourth expo this year.

The promotional event is a crucial part of the expo's efforts to further promote and implement the initiatives proposed at the China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) Summit, officials said.

At the summit earlier this year, China announced a raft of initiatives and shared its plan to import more than $170 billion worth of goods from Central and Eastern European countries in the next five years.

In addition to agricultural products, Central and Eastern European countries have many other featured commodities and services, such as auto parts, mechanicals, electrical equipment, medicine and logistics. China is willing to actively use platforms such as the CIIE and the China-CEEC Expo to expand imports from Central and Eastern European countries, said Suo Peng, deputy director of the European Affairs Department at Ministry of Commerce.

The fourth CIIE is an important platform to implement the initiatives of the China-CEEC Summit, and expand imports from Central and Eastern European countries, Suo noted.

Representatives from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Greece and other countries participated in the promotional event.

Sun Chenghai, deputy director-general of the CIIE Bureau, said Central and Eastern European countries have been important participants since the inaugural expo in 2018.

About 500 enterprises from Central and East European countries participated in the first three editions of the expo, occupying a combined exhibition area of 20,370 square meters and generating a turnover of $2.038 billion, according to Sun.

Sun said that the fourth CIIE will increase its support of enterprises from Central and East European countries through various ways and establish a special zone to facilitate trade and investment matchmaking as well as other related promotion activities between governments in China and the CEEC.

Wang Jinsong, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy in the Czech Republic, said the latter has participated in the expo for three consecutive years, during which it managed to demonstrate the strength of "made in the Czech Republic" and significantly improve the popularity of Czech products in China.

China and the Czech Republic have signed a number of cooperation agreements and trade contracts, and participating enterprises have gained solid economic benefits, Wang said.

Liu Bo, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Hungary, noted that Hungarian companies managed to multiply their turnovers through the second and third CIIE. He added that the embassy will conduct in-depth research on the export channels of high-quality Hungarian products to China and make full use of the CIIE platform to improve the popularity of Hungarian products in China. This move is expected to inject new impetus to the development of China and Hungarian economic and trade relations.

Many Polish enterprises have successfully entered the China market through the expo and Chinese consumers are getting more and more familiar with Polish dairy products, beer and cosmetics, according to Xu Xiaofeng, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Poland.

Xu expressed hope that Polish enterprises would seize the opportunities brought by China's new development pattern, tap the potential of China's massive market, and introduce more high-quality products to Chinese consumers.

In order to successfully enter the Chinese market, the CIIE will be one of the most important events to attend in the future, noted Gabor Jenei, deputy CEO of Hungarian Export Promotion Agency.

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