BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The China Marine Economy Expo (CMEE) kicked off in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province on Thursday.
Around 2500 enterprises, associations, institutions and commercial chambers from more than 70 countries and regions attended the 2018 CMEE.
The Expo hosted by Ministry of Natural Resources and People's Government of Guangdong Province, is the only national comprehensive marine exposition and an international economic and trade exhibition in China.
CMEE started from 2012 and was held annually in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province in 2014.
So far, a total of 11,000 enterprises from 83 countries have participated in the expo accumulatively, with the transactions amounting to more than 200 billion yuan.
At the expo on Thursday, an index which gauges China’s ocean economic development was unveiled, showing that the annual growth rate of the index from 2010 to 2017 was 3.8 percent.
Specifically, trade volume with the countries along the Maritime Silk Road exceeded one trillion U.S. dollars, an increase of 14.8 percent and reversed the decline for two consecutive years.
The index refers to the comprehensive quantitative evaluation on China's ocean economy development in a certain period. It reflects the development scale, efficiency, and potential of the ocean economy, and is of great significance for evaluation of the marine economy, decision-making, optimization of the marine economic structure, and the high-quality development of the marine economy, according to He Guangshun, director of National Marine Data and Information Service (NMDIS) which compiles the index. (Edited by Wu Shuang, wushuang2018@xinhua.org)
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