Experts say CIFIT is the best occasion to introduce investment policies and brief important people on local investment climate and promising investment projects. [Photo/chinafair.org.cn]

A successful exhibition is not only a trading activity, but also an image ambassador of a city, said Zheng Zhi, former deputy director of the China (Xiamen) International Investment Promotion Center.

Zheng has witnessed 20 years of development history of the huge China International Fair for Investment and Trade, or CIFIT, and holds that it is the annual investment promotion event that promotes Xiamen to the outside world.

As a special economic zone in China, Xiamen is supposed to have its own investment promotion activity.

Therefore, in 1987 the Southern Fujian Delta Region Foreign Trade and Investment Fair -- the predecessor of CIFIT -- was held and in just 10 years, the event was morphed from local fair to a massive national and international fair.

In the first few years since CIFIT launched, it was hard to spot a foreign face in Xiamen and now the Chinese city is full of foreigners, Zheng said.

In 2000 the organizing committee of the CIFIT launched the International Investment Forum where directors of transnational corporations, Nobel Prize winners and ministers from different countries were invited to deliver a speech. Such a move promoted Xiamen to the world.

After 20 years of development, the number of CIFIT's participating countries and regions has increased from the original 52 to 144 and its exhibition scale has grown from 30,000 square meters to nearly 100,000 sq m.

Zheng said that as the most influential mutual investment promotion platform in the world, CIFIT is the best occasion to introduce investment policies and brief important people on local investment climate and promising investment projects.

The event this year saw the signing of 2,100 investment projects worth 559.15 billion yuan ($78.89 billion) and drew the attendance of more than 100,000 representatives from 1,008 industrial and commercial associations in 130 countries and regions.