Photo: Staff of e-commerce companies are seen in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, on Oct. 31, 2018. (Xinhua/Tan Jin)
HANGZHOU, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- From a small county known for producing street peddlers to the world's largest wholesale market for daily commodities, Yiwu's development in the past 40 years is the miniature of China's opening-up and globalization.
Along with the country's reform and opening-up, the county-level city in the center of east China's Zhejiang Province has seized all opportunities to continuously develop and innovate its economy.
It is said that one of the key factors that Yiwu holds to today's success is the city's dedication for market development and its efforts for vitalizing business environment.
Such business vibe has attracted about 15,000 overseas merchants from more than 100 countries and regions to settle in Yiwu, according to statistics.
Yiwu is literally the sea of the market, and your capability decides how far you can go, said businessman Zhu Yuelai, who started out by selling tents back in 1998 and now the owner of a well-known outdoor product company with its own brand and R&D team.
In 2017, Yiwu's small commodity market has ranked the first in the national professional market for 26 consecutive years, with a market area of more than 6.4 million square meters, 75,000 business stores, and more than 1.8 million products sold to 210 countries and regions around the world.
Even when the e-commerce hit as the so-called "crisis" for the market-place, Yiwu had managed to turn the situation around by deploying e-business as the engine for a new round of transformation.
The city launched the program of training 300,000 e-commerce talents in two years, established e-commerce industry guidance fund, planned and constructed the Yiwu International E-Commerce City, set up e-commerce parks and worked to establish e-commerce platforms that could connect third party platforms such as Alibaba, Amazon and eBay.
Yiwu fought its way out of the crisis and realized transformation that shifted focus from previous customer flow to information flow, said Lou Zhongping, chairman with a daily necessities company in Yiwu.
In 2017, Yiwu's e-commerce transactions hit 222 billion yuan, up 25.3 percent. Of that, cross-border e-commerce amounted to 22.1 billion yuan, up 38.2 percent.
Photo: A China-Europe freight train from China's Yiwu to Spain's Madrid departs from the Yiwuxi Railway Station in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, on Oct. 27, 2018. (Xinhua/Tan Jin)
Yiwu is also applauded for its active participation in the Belt and Road construction in recent years. So far nine freight rail routes have been launched from Yiwu to Central Asia, London and Spain, influencing 34 countries and regions, covering about 2,000 kinds of commodities and hardware tools that are made in China.
In 2017, particularly, a railway link between Yiwu and Madrid carried Chinese exports to 35 countries. The Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe line, 13,052 kilometers in length, is the longest train route in the world.
Yiwu now becomes the world's gateway for commodities trading with China, and it has balanced itself on imports and exports to position as both an international seller and buyer.
Yiwu brought in 1,854 types of imported goods from 121 countries and regions worldwide in the first nine months of 2018, up 35.23 percent on year.
The return journey of the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe line is now fully loaded with commodities from Spain, France, Germany and the UK such as industrial equipment and parts, red wine, olive oil and maternity products, according to Xu Songhua, president with the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification. (Edited by Niu Huizhe, niuhuizhe@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
