Dongguan: Falls Short of Its Potential

Dongguan is a large Chinese industrial city, with about 7 million residents and a thriving manufacturing industry, located in central Guangdong province in the Pearl River Delta near the provincial capital of Guangzhou.

The Dongguan city administration is considered especially progressive in seeking foreign direct investment and the three municipalities of Guangzhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen are home to more than 25 million residents, accounting for a large portion of the Pearl River Delta's population.

Despite all these pluses, its financial prosperity, two large exhibition facilities and a few large shows, Dongguan, surprisingly, still has yet to fully tap into the potential for a booming tradeshow industry – in stark contrast to nearby Shenzhen, just 56 miles away.

It's surprising because Dongguan is positioned at the epicenter of the South China export processing explosion, which has transformed world trade in the past 20 years, according to Paul Woodward, principal of Hong Kong-based Business Strategies Group and manager of the Asia-Pacific office of UFI, The Global Assn. of the Exhibition Industry.

Dongguan is located almost halfway between Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

Until about 15 years ago, industrial machinery was viewed and purchased at a couple of big exhibitions in Hong Kong, Woodward added, but, now, tradeshows inevitably were developed in Dongguan, and they primarily serve the factories that abound in the city.

“Those have long since moved to Dongguan to be nearer to the industrial engineers who specify the next generation of machinery to be used in the factories,” he said. “Although the general consumer merchandise sourcing exhibitions for international buyers are still primarily located in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, Dongguan has developed one particular specialty: furniture fairs. Those taking place in the city's two major venues are among the largest in China, rivaled only by United Business Media Asia's China Intl. Furniture Fair in Shanghai.”

One of those Dongguan furniture shows, the Intl. Famous Furniture Fair (Dongguan), is organized by the Dongguan Famous Furniture Assn. whose director of international relations, Charley Wang, said in addition to furniture, Dongguan also is home to many manufacturers in other industries, such as shoes, toys and electronics. As a result, shows related to these industries are strong because of the large potential exhibitor base, he added.

Wang's show, for example, is one of the top three furniture shows in China. He said manufacturers need machines to produce, so shows with machines as exhibits also are very strong in Dongguan and the Paper Communication Exhibition Services in Hong Kong is active in organizing such shows in the city.

“I have been told that some of the shows in Dongguan have trimmed in size,” Wang said. “Although my furniture show maintains the same size, we do see a drop in international visitors, and it is not a good thing to see for my exhibitors or for show organizers.”

Exhibitions face challenges in Dongguan. The Dongguan exhibition industry is behind, compared with those in nearby Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Wang added, in both national and international shows, and, generally speaking, is not very well developed.

“There are few well-known, well-organized shows, and most of them are small. Local exhibition companies are not strong in organizing shows, the occupancy rate is low in venues and there's a lack of exhibition professionals,” he said. “These are some of the challenges Dongguan is facing for its exhibition industry.”

Major organizers are Messe Duesseldorf China, The Adsale Group, Paper Communication Exhibition Services, Reed Exhibitions China and the Hong Kong Printed Circuit Assn.

Dongguan's major venues are the Guangdong Modern Intl. Exhibition Center, featuring 100,000 square meters (1.1 million square feet) of indoor exhibition space, and the Dongguan Intl. Conference & Exhibition and Center, offering 50,000 sq. m. (538,200 sq. ft.) of indoor space.

“The exhibition industry is not a major economic driver for Dongguan, but it did stimulate the development of hotels in Dongguan,” Wang said. “For example, Houjie town (a section of Dongguan), where the Intl. Famous Furniture Fair is held, boasts five five-star hotels. It is really rare in China, and even the world, to have such a number of five-star hotels in a town.”