About China Stationery Fair

China Stationery Fair

The China Stationery Fair (CSF), historically known as the China Stationery Commodity Fair, is one of China's longest-running trade fairs and a leading Asia-Pacific platform for stationery, office supplies and cultural products. Founded in 1953, it has been held more than one hundred times, an edition count unmatched by most Chinese trade events, and it is now settled in Shanghai at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC). The fair is organised by Comexposium-CSF (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., with support from the China Commerce Association for General Merchandise and the China Writing Instrument Association. For manufacturers, brand owners, distributors and retailers serving China's enormous student and office markets, CSF serves as the industry's established annual meeting point for product launches, channel development, cooperation and exchange.

Founding in 1953 and the travelling years

The fair's history begins in 1953, in the early years of the People's Republic, when organised national trade gatherings for light-industry goods such as stationery were a principal means of connecting producers with state and commercial buyers across the country. True to that era, the fair was itinerant: in its first five decades it rotated among 45 different Chinese cities, carrying the stationery trade to regional markets nationwide and building what organisers describe as a profound cultural background for the event. That travelling tradition continued into the modern exhibition era; by the time of the 103rd edition, held in Shanghai from June 29 to July 1, 2009 at SNIEC, the fair had already been staged 102 times successfully and was recognised as a powerful platform for both the supply and demand sides of the stationery and office supplies trade.

Organisers and industry backing

CSF is organised by Comexposium-CSF (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., part of the international Comexposium exhibition group. The fair is supported by the China Commerce Association for General Merchandise, the national body for general merchandise commerce, and by the China Writing Instrument Association, which represents China's writing instrument manufacturers. Earlier editions were hosted by the Commerce Association and the Writing Instrument Association and organised by CCAGM Exhibition Co., Ltd. of Beijing. This combination of an international exhibition organiser with national trade associations gives the fair both commercial reach and direct access to the policy and standards work of China's stationery industry.

Settlement in Shanghai and recent scale

After decades on the road, the fair settled in Shanghai, China's commercial capital and the home of SNIEC, one of the country's largest exhibition venues. By 2019 the organiser counted 112 successful editions over more than 60 years. The modern fair's scale is substantial: the 2018 edition covered 46,000 square metres, and the 2019 edition, held June 12–14, 2019 at SNIEC, expanded further, gathering nearly 1,000 top stationery brands from more than 10 countries and regions — including Germany, Japan, South Korea, France and Italy — alongside approximately 40,000 buyers and visitors from around the world, with more than 90 percent of exhibition space sold by February of that year. The edition numbering has continued to climb since, with the 117th, 118th and 120th editions recorded in the mid-2020s, the 120th CSF concluding at SNIEC in June 2026.

Exhibition scope

The fair covers the full range of stationery and cultural products. Exhibits include writing instruments — the sector represented by the China Writing Instrument Association, from everyday pens to premium and gift metal pens — together with paper products and notebooks, school supplies and education products, office supplies and office automation equipment, desk accessories, art materials, and stationery gifts and cultural-creative merchandise. Recent editions have reflected the market's shift toward design-led and customised products, with exhibitors presenting original-design and OEM/ODM capabilities, creative gifting ranges and products responding to China-Chic trends and the upgrading of corporate gifting beyond basic logo-printed stationery. The show thereby serves both the high-volume school and office trade and the growing market for branded, design-conscious cultural products.

Programme: forums and showcases

Alongside the exhibition floor, CSF runs trend forums and design showcases addressing the direction of the industry — product design, branding, channel change and consumer trends. These sessions connect manufacturers with the retailers, e-commerce operators and distributors reshaping how stationery is sold in China, and they give smaller brands a platform alongside the country's largest producers. The fair's stated purpose, as its organisers put it, is to provide a professional trade platform where manufacturers can promote products and explore better opportunities for channel development, cooperation and exchange — a function it has performed, in evolving forms, since 1953.

The market it serves

China's stationery market is among the world's largest, driven by the scale of its education system and office economy. Generations of students and office workers create continuous demand for writing instruments, paper and school and office supplies, while rising incomes have added demand for premium, licensed and creatively designed products. CSF's longevity mirrors that market's development: launched when stationery production was a state-organised light industry discussed in terms of cultural education, the fair now operates in a consumer market where design, branding and intellectual property are central competitive factors. Its exhibitor base, spanning Chinese manufacturers and brands from Europe and Asia, reflects both China's role as the world's stationery workshop and its emergence as a design-conscious consumer market in its own right.

Exhibitors and visitors

The fair's audience is the professional trade. Exhibitors are manufacturers and brand owners from China and overseas — the 2019 edition's nearly 1,000 brands included participants from Germany, Japan, South Korea, France and Italy alongside China's own producers — while visitors are buyers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and e-commerce operators, some 40,000 of whom attended in 2019. Exhibitor accounts from recent editions illustrate the range on show: long-established Chinese writing-instrument makers, including firms with decades of experience in metal pen manufacturing, have used CSF to present original-design and customised cultural and creative gifting ranges, reflecting the fair's role as a launch platform as much as an order-writing event. The China (Shenzhen) shows and other regional stationery events complement CSF, but its edition count and national association backing keep it at the centre of the industry's calendar.

Standing and significance

Few trade fairs anywhere can claim a continuous history from 1953 and more than 120 editions. The China Stationery Fair's survival across the planned-economy era, the reform period and the modern exhibition age — including its transition from a 45-city travelling fair to a fixed Shanghai flagship at SNIEC — makes it a notable institution in Chinese exhibition history. For the stationery trade itself, it remains the sector's reference event in the Asia-Pacific region: the place where the industry's associations, its largest manufacturers and tens of thousands of buyers converge each year, and where the product trends that will fill China's classrooms, offices and gift channels are first displayed at scale.

The fair's institutional continuity is itself notable. The same supporting associations — the China Commerce Association for General Merchandise and the China Writing Instrument Association — have stood behind the event across its modern history, from the 103rd edition in 2009, which they hosted at SNIEC with CCAGM Exhibition as organiser, through to its present organisation by Comexposium-CSF. Edition numbers in the high one-hundreds are rare in world exhibition practice, and CSF's progression from the 103rd edition in 2009 to the 112th by 2019 and the 120th by 2026 documents a fair that has maintained an annual rhythm through successive transformations of the industry it serves.