Creative small commodities draw strong demand at 139th Canton Fair

Creative small commodities are drawing strong demand at the 139th China Import and Export Fair, or Canton Fair, in south China’s Guangzhou, where innovative accessories have become standout attractions for overseas buyers. At a booth featuring bags, those with creative anti-theft designs have become one of the bestselling products favored by foreign buyers.

“Compared with similar products without this design, orders for the new product have increased by 30 to 40 percent,” said Huang Yu, an exhibitor.

Shifting from price competition to innovation, and from volume-driven growth to quality improvement, a growing number of China’s small-commodity enterprises are unlocking new growth opportunities through refined design.

“Chinese products are very good and very interesting. Its new products have so many innovations, and it’s very interesting for us to come here in China to looking at new products and to get the new products in our country,” said an Argentine purchaser.

In the exhibition area for sports, tourism and leisure products, outdoor goods covering various specialized segments offer more professional options for buyers from different regions.

“You just get an opportunity to get so much better value than visiting each factory obviously. When we see a product that’s very, very special or very specialized, that’s why we’re more interested,” said Trend Goulding, an Australian purchaser.

The Canton Fair runs from April 15 till May 5 in three phases, each highlighting categories from advanced manufacturing to home living and lifestyle products. Covering 1.55 million square meters, the fair features 75,700 booths and more than 32,000 enterprises, including about 3,900 first time exhibitors.

Established in 1957, the Canton Fair takes place twice a year in Guangzhou. It is the longest-running of several comprehensive international trade events in China, and has been hailed as the barometer of China’s foreign trade.

Police in Shenzhen City of south China’s Guangdong Province have deployed 24-hour drone patrols around the Shenzhen Sports Center to enhance public safety control during the 2026 Chinese Super League season.

The Shenzhen Xinpengcheng Football Club has officially made the Shenzhen Sports Center its home ground for the 2026 Chinese Super League season. Football matches have attracted more than 10,000 fans per match, leading to intense crowd density and severe traffic congestion, which places immense pressure on security.

Amid the excitement of tens of thousands, the calmest “guards” aren’t in the stands, but stationed over 100 meters above, in the sky.

Before a match began, police officer Wang Yiyuan and two teammates would be already deployed with well-defined roles: one would pilot the drones, another would keep an eye on the spectrogram to monitor the drone activity, and the third would coordinate with other ground police via his walkie-talkie.

Just before the end of the second half, a sudden alert for crowd flow popped up at the south square, where a large number of spectators had begun to gather as they leave the site. As this area served as the only passage for leaving the stadium, the crowd pressure could easily lead to a stampede.

From the initial alert to the loudspeaker broadcast and then to the arrival of police reenforcements on the scene, it took Wang and his colleagues just three minutes to complete the communication, and the crowds began to disperse.