The facade of the Pazhou Complex in southern Guangzhou, venue of Canton Fair.

This year, the financial crisis had a great impact on the exhibition industry with many exhibitions being downsized or even being closed down.

However, it was learned from the China Foreign Trade Centre, that the Canton Fair venues held, altogether, 31 exhibitions from January to June of this year. This shows an increase of eight more exhibitions than the same period of last year and indicates that figures are up over 30% on an annual basis. The total sold area (excluding that of the Canton Fair period) exceeded 1.20 million square meters, increasing 21% on a year-on-year basis. Compared with the same period last year, the revenue was reduced by nearly 20 million Yuan due to an initiative of profit-transferring.

The principal spokesperson with the China Foreign Trade Centre, said that, in response to the hard situations of various exhibitions, the Canton Fair venues took the initiative to allow more profits to exhibitors, cancelling the high season prices, lowering the service former fees and allowing discounts so as to support, in a real sense, the exhibition industry in order to tide participants over the current difficulties.

In the first half of this year, the exhibition areas for advertising, hairdressing, refrigeration, rubber and plastic, lighting and others were all over 50,000 square meters. The exhibition areas for furniture even hit 500,000 square meters, becoming Asia's top furniture exhibition.