Sourcing trips

The China trade show circuit: which show to go to, and how to tell a factory from a trading company

Q: When is the Canton Fair 2026 and 2027?

The 140th session runs in autumn 2026 in three phases: 15–19 October, 23–27 October, and 31 October to 4 November, at the Canton Fair Complex on Pazhou Island in Guangzhou. The 141st, in spring 2027, has not been announced by the organiser as of this writing — the 139th ran 15–19 April, 23–27 April and 1–5 May 2026, and those dates have been stable for years, so mid-April to early May is the reasonable expectation. Do not book flights against an unannounced date.

Q: How do I tell if a supplier is a factory or a trading company?

Ask for the business licence and read the business scope line. A manufacturer's scope names production or manufacturing of specific goods; a trading company's names sales, trade or import-export. Then verify the licence: paste the legal Chinese name into the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System at gsxt.gov.cn, which is free, official and run by the market regulator. If what the registry returns matches the PDF they emailed you, the licence is genuine. Check also that any ISO 9001 certificate is in the same entity's name, character for character — the classic trick is showing you a certificate belonging to a factory they buy from.

Canton Fair is not the only show, and for a first Canadian buyer it may not be the right one. Seven venues compared with confirmed dates, the Canadian visa position and its expiry date, and the registry check that settles what your supplier actually is.

Updated September 25, 2026 Reading time about 16 min Written for buyers planning a first sourcing trip to China

The short version

Canton Fair's autumn 2026 edition is the 140th, running 15–19 October, 23–27 October and 31 October – 4 November. Over 32,000 exhibitors across three phases eight days apart, which is the single biggest constraint on a trip.
Building materials and furniture moved to Phase 2. The old phase map that circulates online is out of date. For consumer tech you want Phase 1; for housewares, gifts and home goods, Phase 2.
Hong Kong stacks two major electronics shows in the same week. Global Sources runs 11–14 and 18–21 October at AsiaWorld-Expo; HKTDC's Electronics Fair runs 13–16 October at the convention centre, forty minutes away.
Yiwu's Futian market is open year-round with tens of thousands of booths across five districts and around 1,900 product categories. For a small-volume buyer testing a category, it beats any fair.
Canadians currently enter mainland China visa-free for 30 days — but the scheme as legislated runs to 31 December 2026. Anyone planning a spring 2027 trip must re-check before booking.
Read the business licence, not the brochure. The business scope line distinguishes a manufacturer from a trader, and the national registry at gsxt.gov.cn lets you verify it free.

Every claim below links to the source it comes from. Where a figure is an estimate rather than a published number, this article says so.

Most articles about sourcing in China are articles about the Canton Fair, and stop there. That is a bit like writing a guide to buying a car that only discusses auctions. The Canton Fair is enormous and important and probably not the right first trip for a Canadian distributor buying a few hundred units of a few dozen SKUs — and there are at least six other venues, one of which is open fifty weeks a year and almost never gets mentioned.

This is the full circuit: what each show is actually for, confirmed dates where the organiser has published them, what the Canadian visa position is right now and when it expires, and the specific, checkable tests that tell you whether the company across the table owns a factory or owns a mobile phone.

Part one — choosing a show

1. Canton Fair — the 140th, and which phase you actually need

Official name: China Import and Export Fair, Guangzhou
Autumn 2026: The 140th session — 15–19 Oct, 23–27 Oct, 31 Oct – 4 Nov
Scale: Over 32,000 exhibitors across 1.55 million m²

A correction first, because it propagates: the autumn 2026 session is the 140th. The 139th was spring 2026. Anyone quoting the 138th for autumn 2026 is a session behind, and the spring 2027 edition will be the 141st.4

Phase	Dates	What is on the floor
Phase 1	15–19 October 2026	Electronics, household appliances, lighting, vehicles and parts, machinery, hardware and tools, chemicals, new energy. MOFCOM frames it as “advanced manufacturing”
Phase 2	23–27 October 2026	Housewares, kitchenware, ceramics, gifts, home decoration, gardening, watches, crafts — plus building materials and furniture, which moved here from Phase 1
Phase 3	31 Oct – 4 November 2026	Textiles and garments, footwear, toys and children's products, office supplies, bags, sporting goods, medical devices, food and beverage

Held at the Canton Fair Complex on Pazhou Island, Guangzhou. The organisers report over 32,000 enterprises exhibiting at the 140th and more than 220,000 pre-registered overseas buyers; the 139th drew 314,000 overseas buyers from 220 countries and regions.2 3

Is it the right show for you?

Canton Fair is unmatched for breadth, and it is the right choice when you do not yet know what you want. It is less good at depth of engagement. Exhibitors are geared to container-load buyers and a first-time visitor asking about a few hundred units will sometimes struggle to be taken seriously — particularly in Phase 1, where the large manufacturers are.

Spring 2027 dates for the 141st had not been announced by the organiser when this was written. The 139th ran 15–19 April, 23–27 April and 1–5 May 2026, and the pattern has been stable for years, but do not book against a date the organiser has not published.

2. Hong Kong: Global Sources and HKTDC, in the same week

Hong Kong in October is the most efficient sourcing week in Asia, because two major electronics shows run days apart in a city you can cross in forty minutes.

Global Sources — AsiaWorld-Expo

Phase 1: 11–14 October 2026 — consumer electronics and gaming
Phase 2: 18–21 October 2026 — mobile electronics, smart home, security and appliances, lifestyle electronics, sports and outdoor
Scale: Over 4,200 exhibitors and 8,000 booths across both phases
Venue: AsiaWorld-Expo, on the airport island — you can land and walk in
Hours: 9:30am–6:00pm, closing 5:00pm on each phase's final day

Buyer pre-registration for the October 2026 edition was reported up 25 per cent year on year, led by Europe and North America.8 Global Sources has consolidated its branding: the old standalone Lifestyle and Fashion shows no longer appear as separate events, and lifestyle content sits inside Phase 2. Its mobile electronics page still displays stale 2025 dates, so use the main show page.7

April 2027 dates had not been announced at the time of writing. The historical pattern is mid-April, two phases, same venue.

HKTDC Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) and electronicAsia

Dates: 13–16 October 2026 — the 46th edition
Venue: Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Wan Chai
2025 scale: 2,898 exhibitors from 17 countries and around 60,000 buyers from 142 countries and regions; over 3,200 exhibitors including electronicAsia
Online: Click2Match matching runs 6–23 October; hktdc.com Sourcing runs 13 September – 12 November

HKTDC's fair is more curated than Global Sources and skews toward established brands and Hong Kong trading houses, with themed zones including a Tech Hall, a startup zone and, new for 2026, a Future Industries zone.10 11

HKTDC's spring electronics edition last ran 13–16 April 2026 at the same venue; 2027 dates were not published when this was written.12 Its housewares fair has been rebranded Home InStyle, running alongside the Hong Kong Gifts & Premium Fair — the 2026 edition was 27–30 April. Use the new name when searching.

3. East China Fair, AWE, and the one show you should not go to

East China Fair — the best-targeted show on this list for home goods

The East China Import and Export Commodities Fair is co-sponsored by nine provincial and municipal commerce departments and held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. The 34th edition ran 1–4 March 2026 across 115,000 square metres with around 4,000 exhibitors and 5,200 booths, focused on garments, textiles, home products and gifts.13 It is trade-buyers only.

It is a fraction of Canton Fair's size, which is precisely the point: the categories are exactly right for a home-goods distributor and the aisles are walkable in a day. The 35th edition's dates had not been published when this was written; the pattern is the first week of March.

AWE — Appliance & Electronics World Expo, Shanghai

AWE2027 runs 17–20 March 2027 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, with a planned 150,000 square metres, over 1,200 exhibitors and 280,000 expected visitors; AWE2026 drew over 250,000.17

Understand what it is before you go. AWE is a brand and consumer showcase — closer to CES than to a sourcing fair — which is why the visitor numbers are so large. It is excellent for category intelligence and seeing where a product class is heading. It is not where you find an OEM supplier.

CIIE — the show you should not go to

The China International Import Expo runs 5–10 November 2026 in Shanghai for its 9th edition, across more than 360,000 square metres, with participants from 180-plus countries and regions.18

It is the mirror image of everything else here. CIIE exists so foreign companies can sell into China. If you are sourcing, there is nothing for you. If you are a Canadian company wanting to export to China — and some of our suppliers are — it is the main event. Articles that list CIIE beside Canton Fair as interchangeable sourcing venues are telling you something about the author.

4. Yiwu — the permanent market nobody tells you about

What it is: A permanent wholesale market, not a fair
Scale: Five districts, tens of thousands of booths, around 1,900 product categories
When: Year-round, closing only for Chinese New Year

This is the part of the circuit that gets left out of sourcing articles, and for a small-volume Canadian distributor it may be the most useful entry on the list.

Yiwu International Trade City — the Futian market — is a permanent wholesale market in Zhejiang province, owned by the Yiwu municipal government, built out across five connected districts between 2002 and 2011. Published figures vary, but it runs to tens of thousands of booths — District 1 alone has over 10,000 — with around 1,900 product categories and more than 400,000 items on permanent display.15 16

District	What is in it
1	Artificial flowers, toys, jewellery, hair ornaments, festival and decorative crafts, ceramics, photo frames
2	Bags and luggage, hardware, kitchenware, electrical products, electronics, auto parts
3	Buttons, zippers, cosmetics, stationery and office supplies, eyewear, sporting goods
4	Daily necessities, knitwear, footwear, hosiery, textiles, clothing
5	Imported goods, bedding, fabrics, auto parts, e-commerce services

Districts 1, 2 and 4 generally run 9:00am to 5:30pm, District 3 closes half an hour earlier, and District 5 runs 9:00 to 5:30 year-round; hours extend a little in summer. Confirm locally before you travel. The market stays open through most public holidays with reduced supplier presence, and closes for roughly two weeks at Chinese New Year.

There is also the China Yiwu International Commodities Fair, running 21–24 October 2026 for trade buyers with a public day on 25 October, at the Yiwu International Expo Center — 4,500 booths, 3,000 exhibitors and 180,000 expected professional buyers.14 If you are in China in late October it is worth a day. But the permanent market is the reason to go to Yiwu.

5. Huaqiangbei, and what it is bad at

Huaqiangbei is a subdistrict of Futian, Shenzhen, covering roughly 2.9 square kilometres and generally described as the world's largest electronics market — tens of thousands of businesses and annual sales in the tens of billions of yuan.19

SEG Electronics Market: The anchor. Around 3,000 booths over eight floors — semiconductors, displays, components
Huaqiang Electronic World: Complete solutions, technical consultation, IoT devices
Mingtong Digital Mall: Wireless modules, networking, IoT connectivity
Huaqiangbei Computer City: Computing hardware and gaming peripherals
Zhongxin Digital Mall: Finished consumer electronics, cameras, drones

What it is exceptional at: selection, prices well below Western wholesale, genuinely flexible minimum quantities from single units upward, on-site customisation and repair, and seeing products before they reach global markets.

What it is bad at, stated plainly because most write-ups skip it:

Telling manufacturers from middlemen — harder here than anywhere else on this list
Counterfeits, especially of branded electronics. Do not source branded goods here
Long-term relationships — vendor turnover is high
After-sales — little warranty, and international returns are impractical
Anything needing certification — machinery, and anything you will need to certify for Canada, is the wrong purchase here
Price transparency — nothing is marked; everything is negotiated

Practically: most markets run 9:30am to 6:30pm, many vendors close on Sundays, and Tuesday to Friday is when stock is deepest. Metro access is via Huaqiang Road, Huaqiang North and Huaxin stations.

Part two — getting there

6. The Canadian visa position — and its expiry date

Mainland China: Visa-free for up to 30 days, from 17 February 2026
Legislated until: 31 December 2026
Hong Kong: 90 days visa-free, unchanged

This is the single most valuable fact in the article and the one most likely to be out of date by the time you read it, so read the whole section.

Canadian passport holders were included in China's visa waiver scheme with effect from 17 February 2026, announced by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and covering Canada and the United Kingdom.21 The Government of Canada's own travel advisory states that Canadian passport holders are included in the scheme and may be eligible for visa-free entry for up to 30 days for tourism, business, family visits or transit.20 Business sourcing is explicitly within the permitted purposes. Canada appears on China's National Immigration Administration list of countries covered by unilateral visa exemption.22

Other details: the 30 days are counted from the day after entry; your passport needs six months' validity; and student and work visas are unaffected and still required.

Hong Kong is a separate immigration jurisdiction and gives Canadians 90 days visa-free, unchanged.23 Visitors may not take up employment, establish or join a business, or enrol as students. Crossing from Hong Kong to Guangzhou is a full border crossing, cleared at West Kowloon station under the co-location arrangement where mainland officers operate inside the Hong Kong terminus.

Note what the waiver did to the old logic. For years the standard advice was to fly into Hong Kong because the visa was easier. While the mainland waiver holds, that advice is obsolete — and it will come straight back if the waiver lapses.

7. Badges, trains and the October squeeze

The Canton Fair buyer badge

Free, but pre-register.5 6

Pre-register online through the Buyer E-Service Tool on the official site. Approval takes three to seven working days.
Download and print the Return Receipt of Buyer Card Pre-registration. This is the document you present in Guangzhou.
Bring four things to the fair. The Return Receipt, your original passport, a recent 5cm × 4cm photograph, and a business card.
Keep the card. The Buyer Card is free and valid for multiple sessions. Replacement costs 200 RMB or 250 HKD. On-site registration is possible but slower and is not free.

Hong Kong to Guangzhou

The Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link runs from Hong Kong West Kowloon. Fastest service to Guangzhou South is 46 minutes; Futian is 14 minutes and Shenzhen North 18. Both immigration checks happen at West Kowloon before boarding, so you arrive in Guangzhou already cleared. Fares are set in RMB and adjusted monthly in HKD — check the current fare on the MTR high speed rail site rather than trusting a figure in an article.24

At the Guangzhou end, the Canton Fair Complex on Pazhou Island is served by Metro Line 8 at Xingangdong and Pazhou stations, with Pazhou also on Line 11.

The October squeeze

Look at the dates again. Golden Week runs 1–7 October, and the factories are shut. Global Sources opens on the 11th, HKTDC on the 13th, Canton Fair Phase 1 on the 15th, Yiwu's fair on the 21st, Canton Fair Phase 2 on the 23rd. Thirty-two thousand exhibitors and several hundred thousand buyers converge on the same three weeks.

Book flights and hotels early, and expect Guangzhou accommodation to be both scarcer and dearer during fair weeks — that is universally reported in the trade, though we could not verify a specific figure from an official source, so treat any multiplier you read elsewhere with suspicion. The structural facts behind it are not in doubt.

8. The itinerary that covers four shows in eleven days

Here is the practical payoff of all the dates above, for October 2026.

Days	Where	What
11–12 Oct	AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong	Global Sources Phase 1 — consumer electronics and gaming
13–14 Oct	Hong Kong	The overlap. HKTDC Electronics at the convention centre in the morning, Global Sources at the airport in the afternoon — about 40 minutes apart by Airport Express and MTR
15 Oct	West Kowloon → Guangzhou South	46 minutes by high speed rail, cleared at West Kowloon
15–18 Oct	Canton Fair Complex, Guangzhou	Canton Fair Phase 1
19–20 Oct	Shenzhen or a factory visit	Huaqiangbei, or visit the two factories that impressed you
21 Oct	Back to Guangzhou	Or on to Yiwu, if home goods are the priority
23–27 Oct	Canton Fair Complex	Canton Fair Phase 2 — housewares, gifts, home goods

That covers two Hong Kong electronics shows and both relevant Canton Fair phases, with a usable gap in the middle for the factory visits that are the actual point of the trip. The 13th and 14th of October are the only two days on which the Hong Kong shows overlap — build the trip around them.

Part three — working the floor

9. Factory or trading company: the checks that actually work

The document: The business licence — 营业执照
The line that matters: Business scope: manufacturing, or trade?
The free verification: gsxt.gov.cn, the national registry run by the market regulator

First, the framing, because the usual version of this advice is wrong. A trading company is not automatically worse than a factory. A good trading company consolidates several factories, speaks English, handles export documentation and takes responsibility for quality — and at the volumes a new Canadian distributor buys, a factory may not want your order at all. What matters is knowing which one you are dealing with, because it changes who you escalate to on a defect and whether the price has room in it.

Check one: read the business licence

A Chinese business licence carries nine mandatory items.25 These are the ones that tell you something:

Item	What you learn
Unified Social Credit Code	The 18-character unique identifier. This is your lookup key. It carries a checksum, so a fabricated code can be caught arithmetically
Entity name, in Chinese	The Chinese name is the legal one. English trading names are marketing and are not registered — if they are evasive about the Chinese name, that is your answer
Business scope	The strongest single tell. A manufacturer's scope names production or manufacturing of specific goods. A trading company's names sales, trade or import-export
Registered capital	A commitment by shareholders, not necessarily cash in the bank. Trivial registered capital against a claimed large factory is a flag; high capital alone proves nothing
Registered address	Many companies operate somewhere other than their registered address — but a downtown office tower for a claimed heavy-manufacturing operation is worth asking about
Legal representative	The person authorised to bind the company to contracts
Date of incorporation and term of operation	How long they have traded, and whether the entity is time-limited

Check two: verify it on the national registry

The National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System at gsxt.gov.cn is operated by the State Administration for Market Regulation — China's company registration authority. It is free and public, and companies are legally required to disclose to it.26 27

Paste the supplier's legal Chinese name into the search. It returns the registration data and the company's operational status — active, revoked or deregistered. The test is simple: does what the registry returns match the licence PDF they emailed you? If nothing returns at all, the company either does not exist or trades under a different registered name.

The interface is Chinese-language and has a CAPTCHA, so realistically you want a Mandarin-reading colleague or your agent to run it. It takes them two minutes and it is the single most valuable check on this list.

Check three: the ISO certificate, in whose name?

The classic move is to show you an ISO 9001 certificate belonging to a factory the trading company buys from. Check the entity name on the certificate against the entity name on the business licence, character for character. Accredited certifications can be verified independently through IAF CertSearch.30

Check four: can they issue a VAT invoice?

China distinguishes general taxpayers from small-scale taxpayers at an annual taxable sales threshold of RMB 5 million. General taxpayers must issue a special VAT invoice on request and are eligible for export VAT refunds; small-scale taxpayers generally cannot and are not.28

So: a genuine manufacturer at any real scale is a general taxpayer, can issue a special VAT fapiao, and can claim export rebates. A supplier who cannot issue a VAT invoice is either very small, not VAT-registered, or routing your order through somebody else. This also connects directly to the EXW-versus-FOB argument in our Incoterms guide.

Check five: do they hold their own export rights?

Three separate registrations, and it is worth asking about each: a foreign trade operator record filing with MOFCOM, customs registration with the local customs branch, and any per-shipment licences the product category requires.29

Read the answer correctly. A supplier without its own export licence is not automatically illegitimate — plenty of smaller manufacturers legitimately use export agents. But it means they cannot declare customs independently and depend on third parties for export compliance, which affects reliability and lead times. Ask for copies of the foreign trade registration and the customs registration certificate.

10. What to ask at the booth, and what to bring home

You will see two hundred booths and remember six. The difference between a productive trip and an expensive one is entirely in the capture process, decided before you fly.

The five questions

“Are you the manufacturer? May I see your business licence?” Photograph it. You are not being rude; it is a routine request and a supplier who bristles has told you something.
“Do you already sell into Canada, and to whom?” The answer tells you whether they understand Canadian certification, and whether you would be competing with their existing customer.
“What Canadian certifications does this model hold?” The correct answer names ISED and a Canadian safety mark. “We have CE and FCC” means the work has not been done — see our compliance guide.
“What is the MOQ, the unit price at that MOQ, and the lead time?” Written down, at the booth, on the spot. A verbal price at a fair evaporates by the time you are home.
“Who is my contact, and are they on WeChat?” Email follow-up from a fair has a poor hit rate. WeChat is how the relationship actually continues.

The capture

Photograph the booth number and company sign before anything else — it is what lets you reconstruct everything later
Photograph the business licence, the product, and the spec sheet
Staple the business card to your notes for that booth, immediately
Write the MOQ, price and lead time down at the booth, not that evening
Score each supplier the same day on the same three axes — product fit, Canadian readiness, and how they answered the licence question
Add the contact on WeChat before you leave the booth

By day three you will not remember which booth was which. A consistent capture habit is worth more than any negotiating technique.

Before you commit, back home

Nothing at a trade show should turn into a deposit at a trade show. Run the gsxt verification, check the Canadian certification position against our compliance guide, settle Incoterms and payment structure using our Incoterms guide, and price the freight with our shipping cost guide before you send a single dollar.

The checklist

Two months out

Check the Canadian visa position on travel.gc.ca — the current waiver expires 31 December 2026
Confirm dates on each organiser's own site; do not trust an aggregator
Pre-register for the Canton Fair buyer badge — three to seven working days for approval
Book flights and hotels; October is the squeeze
Decide which phases and which shows, and build the trip around the overlap days

Pack

Passport with six months' validity
The printed Canton Fair pre-registration return receipt
A recent 5cm × 4cm photograph
Far more business cards than you think — two hundred is not excessive
WeChat installed and working before you land
A power bank, and a plan for connectivity

On the floor

Ask for the business licence at every serious booth, and photograph it
Photograph the booth number first, always
Get MOQ, price and lead time in writing at the booth
Ask the Canadian certification question in those words
Add every real contact on WeChat before leaving the booth
Score suppliers the same day, on the same three axes

Before you send money

Verify the business licence on gsxt.gov.cn against the legal Chinese name
Check any ISO certificate is in the same entity's name
Confirm the Canadian certification position independently
Settle the Incoterm, the payment structure and who exports
Price the freight and the landed cost before agreeing a unit price

If you are a factory or brand

Put your line in front of Canadian buyers

Tell us what you make and we will tell you, within two business days, what it would take to bring the line into Canada — including whether the certification you already hold is usable here.

Submit a line

If you are a Canadian buyer

Buy from someone who has already done it

We confirm Canadian certification and labelling before you commit to an order, and our invoices carry the documentation a marketplace audit asks for.

Open a wholesale account

Common questions

When is the Canton Fair 2026 and 2027?

The 140th session runs in autumn 2026 in three phases: 15–19 October, 23–27 October, and 31 October to 4 November, at the Canton Fair Complex on Pazhou Island in Guangzhou. The 141st, in spring 2027, has not been announced by the organiser as of this writing — the 139th ran 15–19 April, 23–27 April and 1–5 May 2026, and those dates have been stable for years, so mid-April to early May is the reasonable expectation. Do not book flights against an unannounced date.

Which Canton Fair phase should I attend?

Phase 1 for consumer electronics, household appliances, lighting, hardware, tools and machinery. Phase 2 for housewares, kitchenware, gifts, home decoration, ceramics — and, since a recent reorganisation, building materials and furniture, which older guides still place in Phase 1. Phase 3 for textiles, footwear, toys, office supplies, bags, sporting goods and food. If you buy consumer tech and home goods, you need Phases 1 and 2, which are eight days apart — that is the single biggest trip-planning constraint at the fair.

Do Canadians need a visa for China in 2026?

As of this writing, no. Canadian passport holders were added to China's visa waiver scheme with effect from 17 February 2026, allowing visa-free entry for up to 30 days for business, tourism, visiting relatives, exchange visits or transit. But the scheme as legislated runs only to 31 December 2026. No extension into 2027 had been announced when this article was written. If you are planning a spring 2027 trip, check travel.gc.ca before you book anything. Hong Kong is separate and gives Canadians 90 days visa-free.

Is the Canton Fair or Global Sources better?

Different tools. Canton Fair is vastly larger — over 32,000 exhibitors across 1.55 million square metres — and is the right choice when you want breadth, or when you do not yet know what you are looking for. Global Sources in Hong Kong is smaller, concentrated on electronics and lifestyle goods, easier to walk, and its exhibitors are generally more used to dealing with small and mid-sized Western buyers. If you buy consumer tech and this is your first trip, Hong Kong first, then Guangzhou.

What is the Yiwu market and should I go?

Yiwu International Trade City — the Futian market — is a permanent wholesale market in Zhejiang province with tens of thousands of booths across five connected districts, around 1,900 product categories and hundreds of thousands of items on display. It is open essentially year-round, closing only for Chinese New Year. For a distributor testing a new category at small volume, it is often more useful than any fair: exhibitors sell from small quantities, you can physically handle the goods, and you are not competing with 200,000 other buyers for attention.

Should I go to the China International Import Expo?

Not if you are sourcing. CIIE is the mirror image of every other show on this list — it exists so foreign companies can sell into China. A Canadian distributor looking for suppliers will find nothing there. A Canadian company wanting to export to China absolutely should go. Most sourcing articles list CIIE beside Canton Fair as though they are interchangeable, which is a reliable sign the author has not been to either.

How do I tell if a supplier is a factory or a trading company?

Ask for the business licence and read the business scope line. A manufacturer's scope names production or manufacturing of specific goods; a trading company's names sales, trade or import-export. Then verify the licence: paste the legal Chinese name into the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System at gsxt.gov.cn, which is free, official and run by the market regulator. If what the registry returns matches the PDF they emailed you, the licence is genuine. Check also that any ISO 9001 certificate is in the same entity's name, character for character — the classic trick is showing you a certificate belonging to a factory they buy from.

Is a trading company always worse than a factory?

No, and treating it as a binary will cost you good suppliers. A trading company that consolidates several factories, speaks good English, handles export documentation and takes responsibility for quality can be more useful than a factory that does none of those things — particularly at small volumes, where a factory may not want your order at all. What matters is that you know which one you are dealing with, because it changes who you escalate to when there is a defect, and it changes whether the price has room in it.

Sources

Every figure and rule above comes from one of these. Where this article draws a conclusion the source does not state literally, it says so in the text.

Last reviewed September 25, 2026. Rules and rates change. If you find something here that has gone out of date, tell us and we will fix it.