Ni Hao from Chinaplas

I'm in Guangzhou this week for Asia's largest plastics trade show, Chinaplas. This is my first trip to China, and several people have asked for my impressions.

Here's a rough lis, without any regard for importance:

The show is huge, and very international. There are 1,578 exhibitors, and about 1,000 are from outside China. Adsale, the organizer, did not announce attendance figures yet today, but should have some numbers ready in a few hours. The show seemed pretty busy.

Exhibiting companies seemed to have a lot of news, as many are growing here to serve the expanding market.

Traffic is unbelievable. I've been teaching my youngest daughter to drive the past few months, and I never get to the point with her where I cover my eyes and hope for the best. That happened twice today. I don't know how we missed that pedestrian...

I've heard a variety of strategies for serving the Chinese market, and right now it seems like everything is working OK. It will be interesting to see, if there's a downturn, which strategies really work the best.

I'm looking forward to the second day of the show. All day today, people were interested in whether the GE Plastics sale to Sabic had been finalized. But it wasn't announced until after the show closed. Tomorrow, I think there will be plenty of buzz about the news. Interestingly, Sabic is exhibiting at Chinaplas, but GE Plastics -- which my colleague tells me usually has a huge presence at the show -- isn't here.