BEIJING, Oct.17 -- The ongoing China Hi-Tech Fair has gained more popularity among local residents and industry professionals as well, top government officials said in Shenzhen yesterday.

The fair had attracted 450,000 visitors as of noon Monday, already 20,000 more than last year's total number of visitors, Vice Mayor Liu Yingli told reporters at the press center of the fair yesterday.

The professional visitor index, a parameter to measure the popularity of the fair among professional visitors, rose from 207.1 last year to 257.8, the Vice Mayor said. In 2004, the index was at 153.

He praised booths of domestic exhibitors, saying they were the best he had seen in the eight editions of the annual fair.

The fair organizer is not disclosing the transaction volume reached during the fair according to international practice, but Wang Xuewei, head of the city's commerce and industry bureau revealed that more than 94 percent of the contracts signed related to high-tech products.

The transactions cover a wide range of high-tech field such as IT, bio-pharmaceuticals, new materials, environment-friendly products and new energy, according to Wang.

The fair, which was transformed from a local litchi festival to a national-level exhibition to showcase the development of science and technology in China, has provided a strong signal to world that the country is increasingly becoming well known for its high-tech innovation and a home to high-tech start-ups, said the Vice Mayor.

"Many Shenzhen high-tech firms benefited from the fair. There couldn't be the fast growth of Netac, Han's Laser, and Tencent without it," he said.

The fair is also more international with a record number of 25 foreign delegations exhibiting, compared to last year's 23. "The developed countries are here to look for cooperation opportunities and the developing countries want to learn from China," he said.

Finland, a country renowned for its innovation, sent a delegation to fair to introduce its high-tech sectors to local companies.

The Vice Mayor also recounted how he had to show the Mozambique minister of science and technology around two high-tech industrial parks at midnight because of the latter's request.

"He showed me the science and technology development plan defined by his country on Sept. 26 and committed to bring a whole delegation to fair next year," said Liu.

The Hong Kong pavilion is the largest ever, with a larger booth, more people and more organizations than the previous year.

But the Vice Mayor admitted that there is a long way to go for the fair to become a world-class international exhibition. "It takes the Canton Fair 50 years to reach today's fame and scale, and we (the high-tech fair) are only 8 years old,"

The fair organizer plans to reach out to more foreign industry associations, non-government organizations and chambers of commerce to bring more international visitors to the fair, Liu said.

(Source: Shenzhen Daily)