Research on the Causes and Development Countermeasures of “Involution Competition” in China’s Exhibition Industry

Abstract

At the stage of continuous expansion of total volume and steady ranking first in the world, China’s exhibition industry is gradually falling into the involution competition dilemma characterized by “competing on subsidies, competing on prices, competing on scale”. This phenomenon is not a natural result of spontaneous market operation, but an institutional product formed by the superimposed effect of three mechanisms: macro supply-demand structural imbalance, local administrative intervention, and insufficient innovation capacity of market entities. Based on all publicly traceable authoritative data and policy documents such as 2024 China Exhibition Industry Development Report, the 15th Five-Year Plan Outline, and Implementation Rules for the Fair Competition Review System, this study systematically sorts out the practical manifestations and industry negative effects of involution competition in China’s exhibition industry, deeply dismantles the internal logic of involution generation from three dimensions of macro, meso and micro. Combining the mature governance experience of international exhibition powers such as Germany and the typical rectification cases of anti-monopoly regulation implementation in China, this study finally proposes a full-chain governance path adapted to China’s industrial development stage: optimize the supply-demand structure by tapping the potential of domestic demand, build a subsidy compliance system oriented by fair competition, stimulate the endogenous innovation motivation of market entities, and build a multi-stakeholder collaborative industry governance system, so as to promote the exhibition industry to completely get rid of low-level homogeneous competition and realize the paradigm transformation from “scale expansion” to “quality leap”. The research conclusions can provide practical reference for the implementation of anti-monopoly regulation in China’s exhibition field and the optimization of local fiscal subsidy policies, and offer theoretical support for the construction of a high-quality exhibition ecosystem under the unified national market.