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At the home appliance exhibition area of the Canton Fair, exhibitors are introducing underwater cleaning robots to customers. Photo by Li Zhanjun, Southern Metropolis Daily.
On April 17, the third day of the Canton Fair, a matchmaking event without a traditional host was taking place on the second floor of Hall D.
On stage, an AI host smoothly introduced the agenda, with real-time translated subtitles synchronously displayed. This was the scene of the &#34;International Business Resources (Middle East) Matchmaking Day&#34;—no emcee, only AI host, real-time translation, and determined Middle Eastern customers attending. &#34;I must come here to see the goods and replenish stock,&#34; said Iraqi businessman Abbas Al-Rubaie to Southern Metropolis Daily. He noted that local prices have doubled due to shipping costs, but no one plans to replace Chinese suppliers. &#34;My business is closely tied to China,&#34; he said. Abbas's friend Sadi believes that the current difficulties are cyclical and has made plans to cope with the unstable market.
Middle Eastern customers have done the math
&#34;I must come to replenish stock&#34;
&#34;There used to be many (Middle Eastern) customers, but this time there are fewer.&#34; Abbas Al-Rubaie, from Iraq, keenly noticed that the presence of Middle Eastern customers seems to have decreased compared to previous years. Nevertheless, he and many business partners still arrived as scheduled, driven by harsh market realities and the necessity to attend, &#34;I must come here to see the goods and replenish stock.&#34;
Abbas's main focus this trip is on clothing, furniture, daily necessities, and accessories. He calculated carefully: &#34;The prices of Chinese products are the same as before, sometimes even lower. The price increases are not actually due to costs in this area; the costs are actually coming from logistics.&#34; He told Southern Metropolis Daily that shipping costs to Iraq &#34;have risen significantly, doubling due to the impact of the war.&#34;
Regarding whether the sharp increase in costs will be passed on to end consumers, Abbas's response was somewhat resigned: &#34;My customers have no other choice but to accept.&#34; Nearby, South African buyer SAM also stated, &#34;My customers have no other choice either.&#34; To maintain customer relationships, Abbas's strategy is to actively communicate with Chinese suppliers to negotiate discounts, then pass on those savings to his customers to maintain competitiveness.
Middle Eastern buyer Shadi, who has attended over ten Canton Fairs, has a deeper perception of market fluctuations. He observed that the prices of certain goods have been significantly affected by geopolitical factors. &#34;Crude oil, steel, metals, etc., have been greatly impacted, with some goods seeing price increases of over 15%.&#34; Even so, when asked if he would turn to suppliers from other countries, Shadi clearly stated that Chinese products are abundant and have significant advantages, &#34;I will not look for other suppliers; my business is closely tied to China.&#34;
Despite the rising comprehensive costs, Abbas still affirms the core advantages of Chinese manufacturing. &#34;Compared to other regions, Chinese products still offer the best cost-performance ratio. This is why we still come to China and attend the Canton Fair in person, even in the face of turbulent situations and high freight costs.&#34; He candidly stated that this also stems from the irreplaceability of the supply chain, further adding, &#34;I have many friends in the mobile phone accessories industry, and currently, the prices of mobile phone accessories in the Middle East are very high. They come here to look for potentially lower-priced products or consider switching to other products.&#34;
&#34;200% growth for three consecutive years&#34;
The acceleration of cross-border e-commerce in the Middle East
The &#34;no choice&#34; situation for Middle Eastern merchants does not equate to passive acceptance. At the matchmaking event, another option was frequently mentioned, which is cross-border e-commerce.
Li Xiang, General Manager of Alibaba 1688 Overseas E-commerce Business, provided a set of data: &#34;The Middle East is a market where we are growing very rapidly, with Iraq experiencing 200% growth for three consecutive years.&#34; The strong and unique local demand has not only driven the upgrading of Chinese industrial belts but also created new opportunities in categories such as religious apparel, with the online Canton Fair catering to their procurement needs.
However, the journey of cross-border e-commerce to the Middle East is not smooth sailing. Rong Fei, Business Director of Alibaba International Digital Business Group eWTP, listed three major pain points at the forum: high logistics costs, especially in countries like Saudi Arabia, where the &#34;last mile&#34; delivery costs sometimes exceed international trunk freight rates. This crisis has further compounded the situation—ocean freight has risen over 80%, air freight has increased over 50%, and supply chain disruptions have extended delivery times.
Amidst the crisis, new opportunities are emerging. Rong Fei believes, &#34;Post-war reconstruction will unleash huge demand for construction materials, small engineering machinery, and consumer goods; under the trend of energy transition, civil photovoltaic and energy storage products have great potential in cross-border e-commerce channels.&#34; She suggested that companies reconfigure their supply chains, consider establishing overseas warehouses, adopt multimodal transport, and utilize digital tools and AI technology for compliance upgrades.
Compliance thresholds and AI solutions
Becoming a necessary course for going to the Middle East
The thresholds in the Middle Eastern market go beyond logistics and pricing. Liu Yixin, Managing Director of the Ajabr family's China office in Saudi Arabia, pointed out the key issue: &#34;Local people need to understand you and establish sufficient trust before they start doing business with you.&#34; Yao Jie, General Manager of Yuanchu West Asia Group, provided practical advice: companies must conduct research on the destination country before going overseas, &#34;Doing business abroad must follow others' rules,&#34; and emphasize the construction of localized teams.
Liu Yixin further pointed out that compliance situations vary among the Gulf countries in the Middle East. Countries like the UAE and Qatar, which have developed early and are more open, are relatively easier to operate in; whereas Saudi Arabia has gradually announced investment attraction and implementation policies since 2016, which continue to change, &#34;bringing compliance risks to both domestic and foreign enterprises.&#34; In the face of the frequent changes in Saudi policies, he believes compliance should be viewed as a &#34;cultural phenomenon,&#34; and companies should assign dedicated personnel to follow up and pay attention to cultural understanding and communication
However, the hard thresholds cannot be ignored either. Ye Hanxiang, the safety regulation technical manager at SGS Electronics and Electrical Laboratory, cited a typical case: &#34;Many companies did not understand that certification was required in Saudi Arabia beforehand and shipped products directly, resulting in customs clearance issues.&#34; More troublesome is that when the goods are &#34;adrift at sea, it is discovered that certification was not done or is not compliant, and the entire batch of goods can only be returned.&#34; He suggested that Guangdong enterprises consult professional standard testing institutions in advance to understand local policies.
The good news is that AI technology is significantly lowering these thresholds. Li Xiang revealed that AI has enabled &#34;one person to operate globally&#34; and automated multilingual customer service, reducing the product matching time from 21 days to 2.5 days. Yan Luhui, CEO of Carbon Block, shared a comparison: in the past, companies needed &#34;at least two to three weeks for carbon emission accounting, generally one to two months,&#34; but now AI can complete what used to take three weeks in just 30 seconds, achieving a completion rate of 90% to 95%. &#34;This is a huge disruption to the industry.&#34;
Wang Cheng, a researcher at the International Trade and Economic Cooperation Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, provided a judgment from a strategic perspective: &#34;The core of China-Arab cooperation in the past 20 years was energy, while the core for the next 20 years will be industry.&#34; In his view, the Middle East is undergoing a triple reconstruction of security architecture, economic models, and supply chain logic, and there is enormous potential in areas such as the engineering contracting capabilities of Chinese enterprises, the transfer and localization of manufacturing, and digital economy cooperation.
Planning: Wang Ying
Coordination: Ma Jianzhong
Reporting: Southern Metropolis Daily reporters Huang Chibo, Qiu Kangzheng, Wang Leina, Kong Xueshao

At the household appliance exhibition of the Canton Fair, despite the doubling of freight costs leading to rising local prices, Middle Eastern merchants still insist on coming to replenish their inventory. Iraqi businessman Abbas Al-Rubaie stated that the prices of products from Chinese suppliers remain stable, with the main costs coming from logistics. Although the number of merchants has decreased, they still value cooperation with China and actively seek discounts to maintain competitiveness. Market fluctuations and geopolitical factors have an impact on commodity prices

腾讯新闻 - 财经

Domestic products have high cost performance, and the order with doubled shipping costs has not been canceled