Silk Road Intl Expo yields fruitful results

A press conference to announce the achievements of the 3rd Silk Road International Expo and the Investment and Trade Forum for Cooperation between East and West China was held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province on May 15, 2018.

The opening ceremony for the 3rd Silk Road International Expo and the Investment and Trade Forum for Cooperation between East and West China. [Photo/shaanxi.gov.cn]

This year's expo brought together 52 political figures and more than 1,900 foreign guests from 75 countries and regions including Kazakhstan, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Finland, Iran, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nepal, South Africa, and Singapore.

The United Kingdom, as a guest of honor, held nine activities covering investment, trade, education, culture, cultural relics, sister city cooperation, and infrastructure.

Another guest of honor, Malaysia, organized five parallel thematic panels around economic and trade cooperation.

The delegations of the United Kingdom and Malaysia signed a number of cooperation agreements and memoranda at the expo.

More than 40 forums and conferences were held during the expo, including the Silk Road Economic Belt Forum for International Cooperation, the Silk Road Business Cooperation (Xi'an) Round Table, the China-UK Regional Economic Cooperation Forum, and the 9th Global Conference of Shaanxi Entrepreneurs.

Two districts and 12 cities in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Gansu provinces jointly issued the Guanzhong Declaration on national-level urban agglomeration, and initiated 11 Belt and Road education, teaching, and research institutions.

The expo adheres to the new concept of "open and green," breaking the original principle of setting up pavilions according to different regions and countries.

It established a cooperation and exchange pavilion, four industry pavilions, and one featured products pavilion. More than 20 countries including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, South Korea, Thailand, Nepal, and Kazakhstan, as well as more than 30 foreign companies participated in the exhibition.

There were a total of 2,600 booths and more than 2,000 exhibitors, showcasing more than 10,000 varieties of products.

Xi'an's Qujiang and Greenland exhibition booth attracted about 300,000 visitors, including 4,500 professional visitors.

During the expo, the Shaanxi delegation promoted 430 key projects with a total investment of 1.02 trillion yuan ($150 billion), covering the agriculture, energy and chemical, manufacturing, energy conservation and environmental protection, and cultural tourism industries.

The provincial delegation signed contracts for foreign-funded projects with a total investment of $5.12 billion, of which foreign investment was $4.71 billion, up 16.5 percent.

The total investment amount of domestic joint project contracts reached 140.45 billion yuan. The transaction contract value of high-tech achievements amounted to 519 million yuan.