CIFTIS Debuts Going-Global Services Zone for Exporters

The China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) set up a Going-Global Services exhibition zone for the first time at its 2026 edition, held September 9-13 at Shougang Park in Beijing, as China’s service trade seeks fresh momentum and its companies push deeper into overseas markets. The new zone gathered financial, legal, accounting, intellectual property, human resources, and cross-border logistics providers into a one-stop ecosystem designed to serve exporters, according to Xinhua News, which covered the debut on the fair’s closing day.

The initiative reflects a strategic shift in China’s trade priorities: from exporting goods and hardware toward exporting integrated services, technology, and supply-chain solutions. Organizers also established a dedicated Going-Global Services roadshow area, where more than 40 thematic pitch events addressed overseas intellectual property protection, cross-border trade risk avoidance, alignment with international rules, and overseas market operations.

A One-Stop Ecosystem for Exporters

The Going-Global zone assembles the professional services that Chinese firms once had to build in-house when expanding abroad. Financial institutions, law firms, accountants, IP specialists, recruiters, and logistics operators were all on-site, offering what CIFTIS describes as a full-service going-global ecosystem.

Mak Chi-fai, China general manager of business customer business at Hong Kong Telecom, said the fair sent a practical signal to global markets. “China’s innovations in digital technology and high-end professional services are continually being implemented,” he said, adding that the connectivity allows firms to “open up two-way Hong Kong-Mainland-Global services” and help mainland technology companies “go global safely and efficiently.”

The zone’s arrival coincides with strong underlying growth. China’s total service imports and exports reached 8.08 trillion yuan in 2025, up 7.4 percent year-on-year, with service exports rising 14.2 percent, according to Ministry of Commerce data reported by Guangming Daily. Knowledge-intensive services and travel exports posted particularly sharp gains.

From Big Teams to Digital Tools

The fair highlighted how digital services, particularly AI, are lowering the cost of reaching global customers. One featured entrepreneur, 1997-born Zhang Qianchao, runs an export business without any overseas office or large staff. Using two computers and eight AI “agent” employees, he sold more than 3,000 baseball caps to customers in Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

When a Middle Eastern client sent a customization request, an AI “design specialist” produced three design renderings in about ten minutes, closing an order worth several thousand US dollars. “The customer thought I had been doing foreign trade for ten years,” Zhang said. Tasks that once required an entire team-overseas market research, product design, order tracking, logistics, and operations review-are now handled by AI agents backed by enterprise AI platforms, supply-chain resources, online customs clearance, and one-click foreign-exchange settlement.

Banks Build Full-Cycle Cross-Border Support

The financial sector used the fair to showcase a shift from single payment channels to comprehensive cross-border ecosystems. Multiple banks set up dedicated cross-border finance zones, extending from settlement into accounts, clearing, treasury, currency-risk hedging, and going-global advisory.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s Beijing branch launched a personal cross-border finance brand covering study abroad, business travel, and salary scenarios, and expanded its multi-currency “Global Pay” real-time payment tool from state-owned enterprises to private exporters such as Li Auto and Baidu, as well as multinationals including Samsung, Siemens, and Apple.

Bank of China set up a dedicated enterprise going-global zone and entered the transport and business services thematic exhibition with a going-global booth for the first time. It announced plans to add 100 billion yuan in credit to the AI industry over the next three years and launched a “Token Connect” service for AI computing power. China Construction Bank unveiled two new cross-border finance service centers, while Bank of Communications showcased its renminbi internationalization product system.

The broader financial conversation centered on how to fund early-stage innovation. At a financial services forum, Wang Yiming, former vice director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said AI is the core driver of the new technological revolution, reshaping innovation, industrial logic, and financial empowerment models. He noted that financial services remain concentrated in mid-to-late stages-credit, bonds, and capital markets-while seed-stage investment remains relatively weak.

HSBC’s Philip Kan, general manager of the corporate and institutional bank’s sci-tech finance division, observed that most innovative companies are loss-making, making traditional credit analysis difficult, and argued banks should extend support earlier in a company’s life cycle.

What’s Next

CIFTIS, which organizers describe as the world’s largest comprehensive exhibition in the service trade sector, drew more than 40 countries and international organizations in 2026 across nine thematic exhibitions. The debut of the Going-Global Services zone signals that China intends to formalize export support services as a standing pillar of its trade strategy.

Still, the model’s success will depend on whether these services reach smaller exporters and whether financial institutions can genuinely move earlier in the funding cycle-two challenges the fair’s own discussions left open. For now, the message from Shougang Park is clear: China’s export story is increasingly about services, not just goods.