Online Desk: Our region was a wasteland with little human flow a few years ago. Now, thanks to constructing the new land-sea corridor in the west, our company has made full use of innovative ideas and unique operation modes to build an international logistics park and a China-ASEAN characteristic commodity convergence center. It has received attention and support from the political and business communities and successfully attracted the attention of many enterprises in ASEAN countries. It has become a logistics, economic, and trade hub connecting ASEAN countries. It has settled in 5,000 kinds of commodities and received about 4000-5,000 visits per month on average, said Zhao Haiyan, chairman of Guangxi Xinzhong Industrial Investment Co., Ltd.

The China-ASEAN Featured Commodity Convergence Center is located in the China-Singapore Nanning International Logistics Park, a critical project of Guangxi to promote the construction of a new land-sea corridor in western China. It is invested in and built by Singapore Taiping Shipping. The China- ASEAN one-stop shopping platform built by the center focuses on the featured commodities of ASEAN countries and countries jointly built by the Belt and Road Initiative and promotes the deep integration of industrial chain, supply chain, and value chain. To help merchants better explore the market and strive to become the first stop for ASEAN merchants to enter the Chinese market, as well as the window for Chinese merchants to expand overseas markets.

Zhao Haiyan is an overseas Chinese from Singapore who is originally from Guangxi. In 2018, his company invested 10 billion yuan in Guangxi to build the China-Singapore Nanning International Logistics Park. The park is an essential logistics hub that enhances connectivity between China and ASEAN countries. It has introduced more than 30 leading enterprises of the world’s top 500 and China’s top 100 logistics enterprises to settle in and promoted the rapid development of the scale of surrounding projects.

“The vigorous development of the park demonstrates the foresight and effectiveness of the new land-sea channel strategy and strengthens our confidence and determination to invest.” Zhao Haiyan said. To better use “things” and “flow” and promote “flow” with “things”, in 2021, Zhao Haiyan took advantage of the warehousing, transportation, distribution, information processing, logistics value-added services, and other advantages of China-Singapore Nanning International Logistics Park to set up a China-ASEAN characteristic commodity convergence center.

“We have extended the expo period from 4 days to 365 days through the combination of online digital platform + offline exhibition hall immersive business experience, releasing its spillover driving effect.” Zhao Haiyan said that based on the increasingly complete regional logistics, the convergence center will fully integrate the “circle of friends” resources established by the successful holding of the East Expo and the Summit for many years, and help an essential platform for economic and trade exchanges between China and ASEAN.

In recent years, Zhao Haiyan has rushed to ASEAN and even the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) member countries and Guangxi many places to carefully build a China-ASEAN commodity convergence center. As the chief representative of the Singapore Liaison Office of the China-ASEAN Expo Secretariat, she learned that many Chinese customers are very interested in ASEAN merchant products. However, due to the short duration of the expo, she missed many opportunities for in-depth discussions and cooperation.

“Guangxi is the frontier and window of China’s opening up to ASEAN, and Nanning is an important node hub of the new international land and sea trade channel. With the continuous optimization of the business environment, Guangxi has become a ‘new hot land’ for investment by enterprises worldwide. Building a center of China-ASEAN characteristic commodities in Guangxi, especially in Nanning, will not only facilitate ASEAN merchants to enter the Chinese market but also enable consumers to buy abundant ASEAN characteristic commodities at any time.” Zhao Haiyan said.

At present, the convergence center is closely related to the theme of ASEAN features and has held about 200 various business activities, product promotion, and other activities, attracting many high-quality enterprises and featured goods to enter, at the same time, to create an online B2C, B2B digital platform, to help merchants expand customers, increasingly become an essential platform for enterprises in China and ASEAN countries to carry out economic and trade exchanges.

To promote investment and investment cooperation, the Convergence Center also provides cross-border enterprises with various support services, such as resource matching, policy interpretation, small language translation, company registration, financing docking, business consulting, and project implementation so that merchants can realize information connectivity and resource sharing.

In 2023, Zhao Haiyan planned to build the China-ASEAN (Nanning) Fruit Trading Center (referred to as “Fruit Trading Center”) to build a fruit distribution center between China and ASEAN and expand the scale of bilateral fruit import and export trade. Zhao Haiyan said that in the next, we would seize the opportunity of the construction of the new land-sea channel, continue to promote the construction and development of the China-Singapore logistics park through the mode of “attracting business”, attract more brand enterprises to enter the China-Singapore logistics park, form industrial agglomeration effect, and promote the deep integration of industrial chain, value chain, and supply chain. At the same time, we will actively promote the development and construction of the convergence center, build a perfect trade service platform, and attract and help more enterprises from ASEAN countries to settle in Guangxi and the convergence center for deep cultivation.

“We will also focus on building a good fruit trading center. Relying on the large-scale cold chain and high-standard storage facilities already built in the China-Singapore Logistics Park and the one-stop online and offline trading platform of the convergence center, we will build a supply chain and industrial chain system of ASEAN fruit import and export trade and build a circulation core hub linking domestic and international fruit markets. To build the fruit trading center into an important base of the China-ASEAN fruit supply chain, an important distribution center, and a trading innovation demonstration park.” Zhao Haiyan said.