CHINA will beef up efforts to improve the quality of exports while six trade commissions with more than 40,000 exporters as their members vowed to take action.

The signal was sent at the opening ceremony of the East China Fair which opened today at the Shanghai New International Expo Center.

Vice Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan said the government will go all out to support the actions by the trade commissions.

"Although China has become the world's biggest exporter, our trade is plagued by problems, such as low quality and thin profit," Zhong said. "We should further improve the competitiveness of our exports, paying more attention to the protection of intellectual property rights, and establishing our own distribution and marketing channels for high-profit products."

The six trade commissions, covering light industry, textile, mining, food, electrical and medical equipment, vowed today to make joint efforts to upgrade the quality of products exported by their member companies.

The East China Fair, the country's largest regional trade fair and a gauge of this year's trade activities, became a platform to show such efforts.

This year's fair displays more than 60 brands of products which won national awards for excellent quality and about 700 brands that received provincial awards.

Among them are silk products from Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, ceramics from Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province, and garments made of bamboo from Zhejiang Province.

China's exporters are under great pressure this year against rising production costs, a stronger yuan and the trend of protectionism around the world. But many of them who participated the fair showed due optimism.

China's exports expanded 31.3 percent year-on-year while imports surged 38.7 percent, reducing China's trade surplus by 6.4 percent in 2010.

In January, China's trade continued a robust growth when exports rose 37.7 percent and imports rocketed 51 percent.