Foreign merchants experience an AI translation interactive device at the Global Digital Trade Center in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, Oct. 14, 2025. (Xinhua/Liu Ziyi)
YIWU, Zhejiang, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Yiwu merchant Wei Jun still marvels at the sheer speed of his recent deal for 1,000 starry-sky projector lamps, aided by an artificial intelligence (AI) agent.
While his Kenyan buyer was inspecting samples in Yiwu, known as the "world's supermarket" in east China's Zhejiang Province, an automated workflow was triggered: an AI agent instantly beamed the specifications to R&D and supply chain teams, bypassing tedious back-and-forth communication.
This seamless transaction offers a glimpse into a broader transformation unfolding on the supply side. From individuals leading AI agent teams to run cross-border businesses to autonomous transaction matching between buyers' and sellers' agents -- AI is rewriting the rules of cross-border trade.
Yiwu is among the places where this transformation is most visible. It hosts the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities, supplying everything from Christmas goods to World Cup souvenirs. Through the market, an astounding 2.1 million varieties of small commodities have been sold to 233 countries and regions. In 2025, Yiwu's export value ranked first among all county-level regions nationwide.
The viral social media topic "Yiwu's latest sales boom" is not merely a stroke of luck. Behind the viral hits lie a rigorous pursuit of emerging trends by local merchants and a precise judgment based on quantitative analysis. They closely track the next popular category by analyzing trends in short videos and popular keywords in comment sections.
"It used to take us a lot of time to collect and sort information from different platforms. Now, we let AI agents handle the heavy lifting," said Li Shenghai, who has transitioned from an operations specialist to a dedicated AI skills developer.
Businesspeople are pictured at the Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb. 28, 2026. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)
This trend is not just for experienced merchants. AI has also lowered the barrier to entry for entrepreneurship, creating opportunities for One-Person Companies.
Zhang Qianchao, a novice with no prior experience in cross-border e-commerce, successfully tapped into overseas markets with customized baseball caps. He relies solely on himself and eight AI agents on Accio Work, an AI agent platform by tech giant Alibaba, for market research, product design and trade policy analysis.
For instance, every two weeks, the market research agent generates a report detailing overseas social media trends in the baseball cap industry. Once the report highlights a surge in demand for a specific style, it automatically triggers the product design agent to take over.
The AI agents have compressed what was once a two- to three-week selection and design cycle into a single day. The accelerated pace has yielded rapid results: within two months of launching his online store, Zhang has sold over 3,000 caps to markets across Europe, the United States and Africa.
AI is transforming business "experience" into an on-demand service and providing small and medium-sized enterprises with a "business operating system," said Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce.
China's AI strategy is entering a more comprehensive phase. Rather than focusing mainly on technological breakthroughs, policymakers are now underscoring the integration of AI with the real economy -- from manufacturing and agriculture to public services and consumer markets.
This broader orientation is reinforced in the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), which calls for advances in areas such as multimodal systems, AI agents, embodied AI and swarm intelligence.
Observers believe that AI agents are forging tighter connections across global markets. Pan Helin, an expert with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that China's supply chain advantages are being amplified through digital services, allowing "Made in China" products to reach global buyers with unprecedented precision.
A single purchase
