Yiwu is a city of about 1.2 million people in central Zhejiang province,
People's Republic of China. Its built-up area made of Yiwu and Dongyang cities
was home to 2,038,413 inhabitants at the 2010 census. The city is famous for its
small commodity trade and vibrant market and is a regional tourist destination.
Although administratively Yiwu is a county-level city under the jurisdiction
of Jinhua, it is more well-known than Jinhua nationally and internationally.
History Yiwu was founded in the Qin dynasty,
around 222 BC. Yiwu's long history flourished as early as the Neolithic
Age. Yiwu first became a county in 222 BC and was renamed Yiwu County in the
year 624 AD. Trade has been historically important in Yiwu since the surrounding
area has little arable soil. Even before 1600s, Yiwu men would carry sewing
needles, threads, sugar chunks and other small commodities in their bamboo
baskets, using a shoulder-pole, and travel to surrounding rural villages in
exchange for chicken feathers. Chicken feathers could be either used as a
fertilizer for their own lands, or made into feather dusters for exporting. This
"Sugar-For-Chicken Feathers" tradition had become part of Yiwu culture. As the
trading population grew larger, the earliest wholesale markets emerged in
Yiwu around 1700s. After the founding of People's Republic of China in 1949, the
free market was once considered capitalistic and hence officially
suppressed, forcing Yiwu people to continue their trade secretly. It was
only after Deng Xiaoping's economic reform in 1978 did the Yiwu market
thrive again, becoming one of the first free marketplaces in PRC's history. The
cement boards over a stinky ditch nearby Huqingmen street, set up by the local
government as the first marketplace in 1982, later became the present day Yiwu
International Trade Mart after 27 years of development. In May 1988 the former
Yiwu County was upgraded to a county-level city. In 1995 Yiwu ranked
the 47th among China's 100 most powerful counties/cities regarding comprehensive
economic strength and in the same year listed as Zhejiang's sole city among the
nation's experimental counties/cities of comprehensive reform. In 2001 Yiwu's
overall economy ranked 19th of all counties of China.
Yiwu's early culture has given birth to a number of notable figures in
literature, art, military, education and engineering. Among these were Chen
Wangdao, China's first translator of the Communist Manifesto; Wu Han, historian
and former deputy mayor of Beijing; Zhu Zhixi, the engineer who harnessed the
Yellow River; Zhu Danxi, one of the four distinguished doctors of the Jin and
Yuan Dynasties; Zongze, a well-known general from the Song Dynasty who
resisted aggression by the State of Jin; and Wang Lee Hom, a famous singer.
Geography Yiwu is located 100km south of the city
of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province. The nearest city to Yiwu is
Dongyang. The area, as in most of the Province of Zhejiang, is in a
mountainous region. Administration
Yiwu is part of the greater Municipal region of Jinhua, although it has a
distinct urban core. On China's administrative strata it is a
sub-prefecture level city. It has under its jurisdiction 15 towns and 8
villages, which covers 1,102.8 square kilometres, 100 square kilometres of
which are urban area of 700,000 people. There has been talk of merging the Yiwu
and Jinhua areas into a single municipal zone or economic entity, but this plan
has yet to make its way into any formal discussion.
Economy Yiwu is famous in China as a commodities
centre. The Yiwu market developed and managed by Zhejiang China Commodities
City Group Co., Ltd.. Yiwu's China Small-Commodity Market has for 6
consecutive years topped China's 100 top open markets and was for successive
years listed as "China's civilized open market". It has been named as the banner
of China's market economy and with a large variety of quality but cheaper
commodities. There have been a significant increase in Arab traders
since 9/11, as Middle East businessmen found it difficult to travel to the
United States due to visa restrictions. The Arab presence has fostered the rise
of many mosques and Middle Eastern restaurants.
The GDP reached 52 billion yuan in 2009, an increase of 9% from 2008, and the per
capita GDP reached 71,457 yuan. The per capita urban disposable income reached
30,841 yuan and rural pure income 12,899 yuan, increasing 7.4% and 8.5%
respectively. Its 4C-grade airport has over a dozen of
air routes to cities including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shantou, Weifang and
Shenzhen. The Zhejiang-Jiangxi Railway and Hangzhou-Jinhua Expressway passes
through the city, making Yiwu an important local transportation hub. By
train it is less than 3 hours from Shanghai.
"Yiwu, 300 kilometres away from Shanghai, is the largest market of petty
commodity wholesales in the world where various foreign buyers go to place
orders", according to 'Chinese Figures Astonishing the World', joint report
from the United Nations,the World Bank and Morgan Stanley. The city was ranked
first among countrylevel cities In "the 2004 Most Favourite Chinese Cities of
Domestic and Foreign Public in 2004". China Commodity City, the large
wholesale market of Yiwu, was honored by the UN, the World Bank and Morgan
Stanley amongst other world authorities in 2005 as the "largest small commodity
wholesale market in the world". The counterfeiting industry has been a
problem in Yiwu due to the thriving market. As noted by Eamonn Fingleton,
the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of
Chinese Dominance in 2008, "As documented by the author Tim Phillips in
2005... [t]he city of Yiwu ... functions as a sort of 'Wall Street' for the
counterfeiting industry, providing a vast marketplace where, Phillips states,
100,000 counterfeit products are openly traded and 2,000 metric tons of fakes
change hands daily." According to Xinhua, more than 60% of
Christmas trinkets worldwide in 2013 came from Yiwu.
Cultural and social Yiwu contains an Olympic quality
stadium. Many events associated with trade take place in Yiwu City. Yiwu also
has a sizable Chinese Muslim and Korean population, mostly working in the import
and export businesses, as well as a very small Jewish population also in those
businesses. It also has a large Christian Church. Yiwu is also known as
the "sock town" as annually it produces over three billion pairs of socks for
Wal-Mart, Pringle and Disney. Yiwu is also known as China's number one
producer of fashion jewellery as firms are based in Yiwu as there are many
factories making unbranded jewellery and the amount of warehouses that are
available to store the goods in. The Guyue Bridge, a stone arch bridge
built in 1213, is one of the few existing bridges of that era.
Education = Senior High School =
Yiwu High School Yiwu Second Senior High School
= University = Yiwu Industrial & Commercial College
Transportation At 8,111 miles, the Yiwu - Madrid
Railway line is the longest goods railway line in the world. This track
connects China to Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France and
Spain. See also
List of twin towns and sister cities in China
= Twin towns — Sister cities = Yiwu is twinned with:
Jaworzno References
External links Official Yiwu government website
Yiwu Forum