Canton Fair attendance dives

All Roads Lead to China links to an AP article outlining that attendance has dived at this year’s Canton Fair and speculates that China’s exports may contribute a lot more to GDP than most suspect:

When writing First China Ripples of Global Financial Crisis Come Ashore - Part 1 - Trade, my primary concern was not that we would see the impacts right away. Sure, there were going to be industries (like toys) that should have already sailed their holiday goods, and were going to be slow anyway, but I am not starting to believe that this may be going wider. that rather than look to see the impact after the holiday season, we should be looking much more carefully at trade patterns in non-seasonal to see what the story is on these goods.

For me, the simple logic behind looking at these products is that regardless of what many will have you believe, China’s exposure to exports is much higher than the contribution to GDP suggests. It is not a clean number, and as I will explore in a further post, my concern is that the impact on trade will go much further than the recent decouplization theorists will have you believe.

Here’s more on Canton Fair woes from China Daily:

Cookware seller Qu Yanpeng does not have to open a newspaper or turn on the TV to understand the impact of the global financial crisis. She could tell from the lack of visitors to her booth at a recent trade fair.

Qu, a sales manager for well-known Chinese cookware brand Supor, said that she had less than 20 clients on the first day of the ongoing Canton Fair, as opposed to about 100 on previous occasions.

She was echoed by Cloyce D. Palmer, a buyer of agricultural equipment from the United States. Palmer said businesspeople from his own country were conspicuous by their absence from China’s largest trade fair. In addition, he had no plans to buy anything this year, since US distributors cancelled their orders before his trip.