Tarsus in Wuhan

I'll bet you didn't know that Anthony and Cleopatra are supposed to have met in the Turkish city of Tarsus. Wikipedia is a wonderful thing, isn't it.

Well, that's apropos of nothing other than my interest in Tarsus plc and its latest announcement. The company has invested Rmb12 million (US$1.688 million...and rising) for 50% of a company called Hubei Hope Exhibitions based in Wuhan. The press release speaks of 27 fairs, 50,000 square metres, seven offices and 150 employees.

This fits very nicely with two things we've been talking about recently:

1. The growing importance of China's regions in the development of B2B in Asia. Remember, Hubei alone has 60 million people - more than all but a few countries in the rest of Asia. We discussed this in a panel at the recent UFI Open Seminar in Asia and everybody was talking about their focus on moving out to the regions.
   
2. Recent postings on this blog about the focus of business in China moving away from the three big cities.
   

For those of you who may feel the need of a little help on placing China's provinces on a map, I'm uploading a map with all the provinces marked. Hands up who knew before exactly where the Ningxia Autonomous Region is.