The 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) took place from September 2-7 in Beijing. Grouphorse Group was invited to take part in this year’s CIFTIS online exhibition. As part of the Group’s involvement in the exhibition, Grouphorse dispatched representatives to offline meetings, provided expert translation services, and representatives of our Group were interviewed by a number of media platforms such as Beijing Media Network.

What is the CIFTIS?

The China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), formerly known as the China (Beijing) International Fair for Trade in Services, officially changed its name in 2019. As the world’s first comprehensive exhibition in the field of trade in services, the CIFTIS, together with the China International Import Expo and the China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), have become the three major exhibition platforms in China. It is the largest international exhibition in the global trade in services sector, boasting the broadest range of content.

Figures show that this year’s CIFTIS has expanded to include a total of 153 countries and regions around the world, with more than 10,000 companies registered to take part. During the conference, a total of 119 special forums and industry meetings took place. A mixed form of online exhibition and offline meetings enables exhibitors and companies to have cloud-based dialogues, discussions and displays.

Grouphorse’s dedicated webpage on the 2021 CIFTIS site

What’s new at CIFTIS this year?

The theme of this year’s CIFTIS is “Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development”, which aims to highlight digital economics and digital trade. “Digital” is the key word of this year’s Fair, in order to showcase the growing significance of digital economics towards global trade in services.

In our active exploration of trade in services and digital trade, Grouphorse has achieved fruitful results

In recent years, Grouphorse has been able to augment our various business offerings by making full use of the digital assets at our disposal. These digital assets include our online digital conference platform, neural network machine translation engines, speech recognition and image recognition system, cloud-based corpus and terminology databases, intelligent information retrieval platforms for international organizations, cloud-based smart teaching system, intelligent subtitle production platform, multilingual conference recording platform, social media based automatic translation/interpreting testing platforms, and systems for matching and distributing information and for smart interview. We have used our digital strengths to unleash the potential of Grouphorse’s business offerings, such as language services, education and training, human resources, international conventions and exhibitions, foreign-related consultation, and global communication. In short, we took the COVID-19 “crisis” as an opportunity to become a new engine driving the high-quality development of international trade and economy.

In the trade in services sector:

1. Through years of relentless efforts, the Group has become the official language service vendor of over 20 international organizations, which is why we are regarded as a model enterprise within the industry;

       United Nations Headquarters, New York

       United Nations Office at Geneva

       United Nations Office at Nairobi

       United Nations Office at Vienna

       Office of the United Nations Coordinator in China

       United Nations Department of Global Communications

United Nations World Food Programme

United Nations Development Programme

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

World Intellectual Property Organization

United Nations Environment Programme

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

World Health Organization

International Monetary Fund

United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

2. The Group has successively held the China Interpreting Contest (officially endorsed by UNITAR) and the China Written Translation Contest (officially endorsed by UNIDO), as well as the 2021 Grouphorse Cup National English Speaking Contest (officially supported by the British Council and the Chartered Institute of Linguists). These events have helped to secure a large number of international talents who are ready to contribute towards cultural and linguistic understanding in the global trade in services sector.

3. Our Group’s language services department uses digital technology platforms such as online conference software. Based on these digital strengths, we have provided multilingual remote simultaneous interpreting services. In doing so, the company has been able to overcome the obstacle of travel restrictions and created safe, effective lines of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Group has made full use of our online education platforms to provide free internship and practice opportunities to a great number of students in China and abroad. As of August, 2021, over 30,000 students have taken part.

5. Our human resources system, Grouphorse Talent, dispatches talented translators and interpreters to numerous groups of high-end clients by using innovative service models. This provides the talents themselves with extra momentum for seeking high-quality employment. Grouphorse Talent achieves this by relying on our three major talent reserve networks: our network of partnerships with up to 200 universities around the world, our own alumni network from the Cema Training School of Translation and Interpreting, and the network created from our series of translation and interpreting contests.

6. The Group has provided various online services for international conferences and exhibitions through our online digital conference platform. As our past digital visualization projects vividly demonstrate, including the Grouphorse and UN: A Photo Exhibition in Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the UN, we have made remarkable achievements in cross-border trade in services.

7. Grouphorse has given full play to the advantages of our foreign talent training alliance in providing customized foreign-related consulting services for multinational companies and other export-oriented institutions. These services have featured country research, market development, establishment of foreign partnerships, and international project bidding.

8. With the help of our business infrastructure surrounding foreign-related services, the Group always adheres to our corporate mission to “Facilitate Global Communication for Better International Relations,” and to assist in the mutual learning and communication between civilizations around the world.

Klink Zhou, Vice President of Grouphorse Translations Group and General Manager of the Grouphorse Global Center for Translation and Interpreting, was a guest at the meeting, and said the following in an interview with BRTV’s “Beijing News”:

“We can use the results of our digitization to help bring our full range of services to the world, better serving our worldwide clients.”

When discussing how to continue opening up again after the pandemic, Klink Zhou had this to say:

“These forms of digital trade are absolutely necessary when opening up and going out. We are directly extending our services from China to the outside world over the internet, making use of a number of specific software and digital mechanisms.”