When the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) opened at Beijing’s Shougang Park on September 9, drawing about 90 countries and international organizations, a first-time exhibitor from Chengdu used the stage to put Sichuan’s handwoven and embroidered couture in front of international buyers. The West China Haute Couture Center occupied its own zone inside the “Beautiful Sichuan, Charming Services” pavilion, showing the province’s “four Shu treasures” — Shu brocade, Shu embroidery, Shu incense and Shuxie (蜀缬, Sichuan tie-dye) — alongside redesigned works built on ethnic heritage crafts.
Sichuan’s presence at the fair spans seven national-level and six provincial-level service-trade bases with more than 30 companies, covering cultural tourism, digital creativity and biopharmaceuticals. The 100-square-meter pavilion leans on recognizably Sichuan symbols — Sanxingdui, Zigong lanterns, the giant panda — displayed through naked-eye 3D, sliding interactive screens, AR and a holographic digital human, with immersive sections on the Jiangkou sunken-silver site and the Sansu ancestral shrine. The couture center appears in two halls with two logics: Hall 4 presents the industrial chain, from loom to designer’s sketch to export market, while Hall 12 presents daily life under the “Tianfu Living” theme, placing incense, tea, bamboo weaving and panda merchandise into home, wardrobe and gifting scenarios.
“We brought 15 national-level intangible heritage items this time, and overseas market recognition is very high,” said Wang Xiaocan, chief advisor of the center. Based in Chengdu’s Jinniu district and built with government-led investment, the center connects design resources, stages brand showcases, runs talent exchange and converts traditional crafts into contemporary products; it also houses a foreign-trade selection center that helps “Made in Sichuan” textiles and heritage goods reach international buyers.
The Hanfu works on display kept the technique and pattern language of Shu brocade and embroidery while adopting modern weaving, functional fabrics and even flexible screens, aiming at everyday wear rather than museum reproduction. Buyer response at Hall 4 was concrete: one international purchaser said he had seen many “Eastern-style” fabrics, but the weaving logic and design language of Shu brocade surprised him — strongly decorative, yet structurally compatible with modern garment construction, a usability he described as what European buyers value most. He left with notes on several fabrics and incense products to pitch to boutiques back home.
Wang framed the trade-fair moment in larger terms: heritage participation in services trade is not just selling products but building a sustainable service system around the craft — design services, custom production, experience courses and brand licensing, each link a tradable content unit. He argued that inheritance cannot rely on oral transmission alone: the patterns of Shu brocade, the stitch vocabulary of Shu embroidery and the color archives of tie-dye can all become data assets through digitization, letting AI-assisted tools accelerate both preservation and innovation.
Policy tailwinds arrived just before the fair. In late August, six ministries led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued an opinion on advancing “historical classic industries,” calling for cross-over cooperation between heritage firms and leading brands or designers, higher value-added products, “industry brain” pilot zones and AI large models that decode traditional craft principles into knowledge graphs. At a State Council Information Office briefing on September 7, an MIIT official said consumption scenarios should bring tea-making, embroidery and porcelain craft to the front of the stage so consumers can experience the skills directly.
The numbers behind the push: Sichuan’s services trade reached 144.93 billion yuan in 2025, ninth nationally and first in central and western China; in the first half of this year, services imports and exports hit 66.64 billion yuan, up 5 percent, with exports of 32.64 billion yuan up 28.6 percent — 11 points above the national growth rate. A regular at CIFTIS, Sichuan also placed three cases on the fair’s “China Service” outstanding-case list this year: a one-stop Southeast Asia cross-border platform, a digital cultural-creative collaboration platform, and a facilitation scheme for cross-border flow of biomedical research materials.
