The Canton Fair, one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive trade shows, opened its 103rd session April 14th in Guangzhou, China.

This year’s event (and almost every year) is said to be the ‘biggest and best’ with ever increasing numbers of exhibitors and expected attendees.

However, SCMP.com and our good friend, Paul Woodward, have reported that things are off to a slow start as attendance and orders are down.

Is this due to a slowing global economy and will this trend continue throughout this show and year? We agree with Paul that it is too soon to tell given global stock markets remain highly volatile, climbing inflation / food prices, consolidating airlines and the falling U.S. dollar. Not to mention, that it is only day 4 of this event.

Other related show news, reported by Pacific Epoch, includes the refused entry of Alibaba.com and other B2B companies as exhbitiors into Canton Fair, given they only ’self promote’ and do not conduct trade.

I am not sure why this is newsworthy as most trade media companies have historically opted for exhibition space around the Canton Fair venues as it has typically offered better visibility and price. That being said, I know that ANY space is now hard to come by (if you attend you will see Alibaba.com, Global Sources and Global Market everywhere) and at an extreme premium.

I am not attending this year but welcome comments from those on the ground in Guangzhou as to how they find this year’s event and quality of product/suppliers.