November 7, 2018

CIIE 2018: Flying Car, Diamond-Crusted Shoes and Much More

By: Azhar Azam


A Slovakian startup, AeroMobil, is making its debut in the trendsetting China International Import Expo (CIIE) – showcasing its electric hybrid 4.0 STOL (short take-off and landing) Flying Car during a 6-day trade fair. 

The all-weather AeroMobil offers both the aerial and earthbound features, that a car and an air plane has to offer and can be fully transformed into the flight mode within three minutes. It will go on sale at some time in 2020 or 2021. 


Genavant, the luxury shoemaker company founded by London-based Malaysian Professor Jimmy Choo Yeang Keat OBE Keat and his godson Reggie Hung, are parading the latest collection of their diamond-crusted shoes in the exhibition.

Priced at $4.35 million for a pair, the luxury shoes are adorned with pink and white diamonds and are being displayed with other bejeweled shoes. ‘We spent almost one year one it’, the 70-years old Choo said.


More than 3,000 enterprises from over 130 countries and regions are slated to showcase their products and technologies in the pioneer China International import Expo (CIIE), inaugurated on November 5 in Shanghai.

Volunteered by nearly 5,000 coworkers, a large exhibition area of 270,000 square meters is sauntered by nearly 300,000 visitors, who could shop everything from Russian ice cream, Persian carpets, Turkish handicrafts, to Egyptian dates.

Leonardo helicopters, Medtronic’s world’s smallest heart peacemaker, Honeywell’s logistics technologies, UPS’ wood-based renewable diesel BioVerna eco-friendly car, Westcom’s bio-toilets to turn waste into fertilizer, and Nannini’s presbyopic foldable glasses are some of innovative products and services being displayed in the expo.

In May, Chinese President Xi Jinping had announced at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that China will host the first-ever import exhibition, scheduled from November 5 to November 10.

With the help of CIIE 2018, China is pursuing to expand a strong competitive base to its imports, which are expected to exceed $10 trillion in the next three years.

In the first nine months of 2019, China’s exports have increased by 20%, to $1.6 trillion. Nevertheless, it is still maintaining an aggregate trade surplus of $223 billion as its exports also rose by 12.2% for the same period.

The expo is also marked with a watchword ‘New Era, Shared Future’ – warbling it as a Chinese endeavor to inject vitality in the global economic growth by pushing the trade liberalization and facilitation worldwide.

CIIE 2018 is supported by international trade and industrial corpora such as The World Trade Organization (WTO), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Municipality government of Shanghai has approved 30 year-round platforms for exhibitions and trade of imported goods, which will be available to the business on permanent basis even after the expo closes.

The Greenland Global Commodity Hub, a platform provided for foreign firms to demonstrate their products, will provide services to help introduce exotic products to channels like the high-end markets of G-Super.

The hub will host an African pavilion of 10 countries including South Africa, Morocco, Angola, Senegal, and Ghana. The expo will facilitate more than 110 companies from over 40 countries to reaching their foreign imports in China.

However, the show is much smaller to the Canton Fair, the other biannual China’s import and export fair, being held in Guangdong since 1957. Ended on Sunday, 636 foreign companies from 34 countries and regions participated in the trade gala this year.

Underscoring the close friendship with Pakistan, China has given Pakistan the status of ‘Guest of Honor’ and has provided free of cost space in the exhibition.

Some 40 businessmen from Pakistan are also participating in the historic expo, providing them the much-needed international platform to demonstrate their products and to shore-up the country’s exports.

Pakistan is one of the largest agro-based economies while at the same time, China is the world’s biggest destination of agriculture products such as rice, grains, cotton, meat, sugar, and milk. Rice makes one-third of the country’s total agriculture exports.

Not long ago, Pakistan was the second-largest exporter of non-basmati rice to China but over the time, it lost its crucial market. Now with the change in Pakistani government, China has signaled to give Pakistan a preferential treatment for exports.