BEIJING. – The Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup is driving up China’s home appliance exports to the Middle East, with color TVs, air conditioners and projectors among the most popular goods, and Middle Eastern and African markets along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) route are becoming hot targets for Chinese appliance firms, industry data showed.
In the first 10 months of 2022, China’s exports of home appliances to the League of Arab States, including Qatar, rose by 11.21 percent on a yearly basis, while exports of colour TVs alone increased by 29 percent year-on-year, according to data from the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.
The World Cup also gave a boost to cross-border e-commerce. According to AliExpress, the global retail online marketplace under Alibaba Group, sales of China-made foosball tables in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) surged 120 percent and that of couches jumped 800 percent year-on-year over the past month.
Meanwhile, sales of Chinese projectors on the platform in the Middle East in October rose 120 percent year-on-year.
Liang Zhenpeng, a senior industry analyst, attributed the rapid sales growth in the Middle East to local residents’ demand for watching the World Cup but more importantly, the increasingly high-end brand image of Chinese home appliance makers on the back of their technological innovation and improved after-sales services. – Global Times
