On August 21, 2026, the 34th Guangzhou Expo and the 12th International Exhibition of Inventions opened concurrently at the China Import and Export Fair Complex. Joining forces, the two major events have achieved end-to-end integration spanning technological innovation, industrial display, supply-demand matching, and the commercialization of innovation achievements. By pooling high-quality resources from across the country and around the world, they are injecting strong momentum into high-quality development. The expo will run until August 23.
Themed "Integrating Manufacturing and Services for Quality and Efficiency, Smoothing Circulation Towards the Future," this year's Guangzhou Expo features a total exhibition area of approximately 200,000 square meters. It has attracted over 5,000 exhibiting companies and more than 10,000 professional buyers, while hosting government delegations from over 50 provincial and municipal governments nationwide. The expo focuses on three major sectors—advanced technology, health and wellness, and premium consumption—and is strategically laid out with five featured zones: intelligent manufacturing, the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project and rural revitalization, silver economy and elderly care, medical and health, and premium consumption. Notably, this year's expo has innovatively introduced a four-dimensional integrated exhibition model featuring "guest of honor plus international, on-site plus off-site, daytime plus nighttime, and online plus offline." It serves as both an industrial reception lounge for opening-up and a technological carnival for the public. Rich on-site experiences, including robot arena competitions, VR gaming interactions, and robotic dog demonstrations, allow visitors to immerse themselves in the charm of future technologies.
At the opening ceremony, Zhao Guosheng, Vice Mayor of Guangzhou, stated that last year's inaugural collaboration between the two expos achieved a two-way synergy between technological and industrial innovation. This year's renewed partnership represents a deep integration of invention and innovation with market application. Guangzhou will continue to drive industry through innovation and invigorate the market through commerce, turning good ideas into good business, and good business into great enterprises. He noted that Guangzhou currently boasts six advanced manufacturing clusters with an output value exceeding 100 billion RMB each, and ten service industries with an added value surpassing 100 billion RMB each. The city is at the forefront nationally in fields such as new displays, biomedicine, the low-altitude economy, and autonomous driving. With an enrolled university student population of over 1.7 million, Guangzhou ranks sixth globally in the Nature Index for scientific research cities. He sincerely invited friends from all sectors to visit and put down roots in Guangzhou, sharing in the city's development opportunities.
For the first time, the Guangzhou Expo has introduced the Guest City of Honor program, inviting Haikou to participate deeply and building a bridge of cooperation between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Hainan Free Trade Port. In his speech, Zhang Yong, Mayor of Haikou, stated that the coordinated development of Guangdong and Hainan, as well as the synergistic growth of the Greater Bay Area and the Hainan Free Trade Port, carries the earnest expectations of the CPC Central Committee. Currently, Haikou is focusing on the "45432" development framework, concentrating efforts on building the "Wuxing" industries, and accelerating the construction of a core leading area for the Hainan Free Trade Port and the "Six Cities." During the expo, Haikou will host the "Invest in Haikou, Guangdong-Hainan Rendezvous, Moving Towards Each Other" Industrial Cooperation Exchange Conference, looking forward to joining hands with Guangzhou's research institutes, sci-tech enterprises, and inventive talents to jointly build an innovation closed loop of "R&D in the Greater Bay Area, commercialization in the Free Trade Port, and global layout."
Xue Qikun, winner of the State Supreme Science and Technology Award, President of the Southern University of Science and Technology, and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, shared his insights on sci-tech innovation in his speech. He pointed out that scientific discovery and invention represent a breakthrough from 0 to 1, while expansion and application constitute a leap from 1 to 100. The expo serves as a bridge connecting these two ends, where starry-eyed exploration and down-to-earth application converge. He particularly emphasized that only by deepening international cooperation with a more open mindset can science and technology better benefit humanity. The Southern University of Science and Technology looks forward to deeply connecting with global innovation forces through the expo platform, helping more breakthroughs from 0 to 1 find their path to realization from 1 to 100.
Hu Wenhui, Deputy Commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, introduced the latest progress in intellectual property work. He stated that the country has currently planned and built 137 national-level intellectual property protection centers and rapid rights protection centers, with the number of valid invention patents in strategic emerging industries reaching 1.746 million. The industrialization rate of invention patents in universities has increased to 10.1%, and that in research institutes has reached 17.2%. In 2024, the added value of patent-intensive industries reached 18 trillion RMB, accounting for 13.38% of the GDP. The Patent Prosecution Highway cooperation network now covers 86 countries, and in 2025, the total import and export volume of intellectual property royalties reached 425.3 billion RMB. He emphasized that the intellectual property system is a catalyst for innovation and an accelerator for economic development, and the CNIPA will continue to promote the transformation of innovation achievements into real productive forces.
In addition, the Guangzhou Expo is concurrently hosting the 2nd Guangzhou Consumption Assistance Exhibition and the 2026 National Agricultural and Commercial Interconnection Event. Gathering nearly a thousand business entities from 22 provinces across the country, it opens up the circulation channels for agricultural and specialty products, enabling them to move out of mountainous production areas, enter the Greater Bay Area market, and go global via cross-border trade, thereby promoting rural revitalization and coordinated regional development through market-oriented approaches.
Over the next three days, the expo will continue to hold a rich array of activities, including industry promotion, supply-demand matching, project signing, and public benefit experiences, building a broad platform for exchange and cooperation among governments, enterprises, research institutes, and the general public.