The Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress announced guidelines regarding the promotion of the convention and exhibition industry in Shanghai on March 19.

The guidelines, which aim to transform the city into a global hub for exhibitions, are the first of their kind in the exhibition sector in China, and are geared toward improving service quality and efficiency and offering supportive measures.

According to the guidelines, Shanghai will seek to attract international exhibition enterprises to set up headquarters in the city and to build a market for large-scale exhibitions with global competitiveness.

There is a special section in the guidelines for the regulation of service guarantee work by the China International Import Expo (CIIE):

1. As for the overall requirements of CIIE service guarantee work, the municipal people's government should implement the national strategy, and under the leadership of the expo's organizing committee, strengthen organization and coordination, and implement the service guarantee measures together with the relevant departments.

2. As for the urban service guarantee mechanism, the municipal people's government shall establish the urban service guarantee mechanism for CIIE, implement the guarantee plan for major activities, strengthen the security, transportation, energy, communications and other urban service guarantee work, and ensure an international first-class expo. Relevant municipal departments and district people's governments shall, in accordance with their respective responsibilities, support the urban service guarantee work.

3. As for the customs clearance facilitation measures, customs should simplify clearance procedures for exhibits entering the expo, improve clearance efficiency for exhibits, and facilitate the disposal of exhibits after the exhibition in accordance with the requirements of convenient, safe and efficient customs clearance. Support the normalization of bonded exhibition transactions.

4. As for the spillover driving effect of CIIE, municipal and district people's governments should strengthen overall planning and coordination, continue to amplify the spillover driving effect, expand opening-up, promote industrial development, improve city quality, promote the construction of the Hongqiao international open hub and give full play to its role as a normalized international trade service platform.

5. As for the synergy between the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and CIIE, the municipal and district people's governments, relying on the CIIE platform, will strengthen cooperation with other provinces and cities in the YRD region, and strengthen coordination in key areas such as security, port clearance, environmental protection, and intellectual property protection. Promote the interconnected development of the convention and exhibition industry in the YRD region with other industries, and make Shanghai a distribution center for import and export commodities that connects the YRD, serves the whole country and reaches the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, the regulations also include "online exhibition" as a new type of business, encouraging the host units, venue units and exhibition service units to use modern information technology to carry out service and management innovation, promote the development of online exhibitions and other new types of business, to form an organic integration of online and offline exhibition activities.