Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, specifically how to develop the economy?

When it comes to Yiwu, almost all Chinese people on the southeast coast will react to one word in their minds: small commodity market. Yes, almost all economic activities in this county-level city, which now seems to be the most economically dynamic in Zhejiang and even in China, are centered around the small commodity market. As an icon, Yiwu describes itself on CCTV's city image ads as "an ocean of small commodities and a shopper's paradise". The city is just over 1,000 square kilometers in size, with a local population of more than 600,000, but almost double the number of foreigners. Among these foreigners, there are also a considerable number of merchants from all over the world. The official figure is 8,000 people, while according to the reporter, the folk say that the number reaches tens of thousands. Grassroots economy Since the reform and opening up, Yiwu adhere to and deepen the "build business city" development strategy to cultivate, develop and enhance the market as the core, and vigorously promote industrialization, internationalization and urban-rural integration, and walked out of a regional development road with its own characteristics.

"This place was poor, the natural conditions of agriculture is not good, many farmers had to go out of business, shaking the rattle to sell sugar. Yiwu government in the local people are difficult to survive, in many places are driving 'road market', can only consider accepting them so that they can survive. Do not dare to say that Yiwu city leaders have foresight, then just out of an instinct: in order to support the farmers, in order to develop the economy." Ma Li Hong, vice president of the Party School of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and vice president of the Zhejiang Institute of Administration, told China Economic Weekly.

As Dean Ma said, today's Yiwu is shaken out of the wave drum, although Yiwu leaders do not have foresight, but Yiwu people know what to do, what should not do. Yiwu people dare to be the first in the world. In the early 1980s, Yiwu was the first in the country to liberalize the business registration of individual households, allowing farmers to do business, allowing the opening of urban and rural markets. Let go of the farmers in business like a fish out of water, have joined the business team. During this period, some of the business households through the business initially completed the primitive accumulation of capital, buy machines to set up a processing plant, the formation of a "store in front of the factory," the integration of industry and commerce of the family business model.

The Yiwu government's generous acceptance of the local people's living conditions improved, from the government's point of view, increased tax revenue, the city's development will have more bottom line. What was not expected was that once the market was formed and the circulation was large, merchants flocked to the city. For a time, Jinhua, Yongkang and other places of small commodities are concentrated in Yiwu, Yiwu market gradually strong, and eventually formed a distribution center, in the country and even the world are well known. Plane description of Yiwu is difficult, in several major markets as dense as a flood of people, logistics and almost invisible financial flows, you can hardly find a clear Yiwu. The good thing is that we try to dissect this grassroots city with no resources and no state investment more vertically. This will be much clearer and easier. Chicken feather for sugar: the grass-roots basis of the popular trade Yiwu businessman Zong Chengying is now an entrepreneur, he handed over to pick the business card is the general manager of the Yiwu Mona socks company. The size of the factory is not small, more than 3,000 employees, Yiwu is a number of socks factory. Although people mention Yiwu socks will immediately think of "Longsha", but Zong does not seem to recognize the "Longsha" factory to do better than their two brothers. "They pay more attention to publicity, because the main market are in the domestic market, so the brand is very important; and our sales have a large piece of foreign trade, so in the publicity than they are weaker."　　"I have been in the sea of business floundering for 30 years, most of the time is not in doing business. I used to run into a businesswoman who envied us for being industrial and having fewer thoughts. But I said to her, doing industry is really a very tiring thing, the profit is much better than doing business. To say industry, that is a word of stability, other and business can not be compared."　　Zong is qualified to say this, because he is a businessman from the transformation of entrepreneurs. In Yiwu, almost all the local entrepreneurs from the businessman turned.　　"At the earliest time probably until 1970, I started doing business, starting from chicken feather for sugar. All Yiwu older businessmen are from this small business began. No way, Yiwu poor ah, per capita land is only a few points, if you honestly stay in the ground, then the family food is certainly not enough. So farmers are fashionable at home with brown sugar boiled into a sugar cake, with a stretcher to go outside for chicken feathers, back to the social enterprises can be exchanged for some money, they use the chicken feathers to do Zhejiang city families commonly used chicken feather duster, this money to subsidize the family."　　"Chicken feathers for sugar time to do a long time, the hearts of people also wild, always want to do some business. Later, they secretly find some social enterprises in southern Jiangsu, looking for relations between the batch of buttons and other daily necessities to the local store to sell. This was not allowed at that time, so you have to do it secretly. The day before in the production team to take a good vacation, the night on the departure, walk to Yiwu station, take the night bus to Jiaxing is the morning, change to Suzhou car, noon to Suzhou, afternoon to the factory to take goods immediately turn back to Jiaxing, night to Jiaxing, take the night bus back to Yiwu just the early morning directly down to the ground to work, after the closing of the work and then come back to hide in the home of the goods to get to the goods to be a small store." Zong said that this hard two days of collection is probably equivalent to the production team in one or two months of work value. For Zong's experience, veteran Yiwu local retired cadres Feng Zhilai evaluation for the roots of Yiwu Commodity Market. "If there is no these people were forced out of this road, Yiwu next small commodity market is open up will not prosper. They walk around in a trade route, feel familiar with the source of each line, the next family, only to have the roots of the market. And the starting point of these roots can almost always be summarized in the Yiwu tradition of chicken feather for sugar that has been passed down from generation to generation." From the stalls to the start of the shed in 1984 is the Yiwu Small Commodity Market key point, then Secretary of the Yiwu County Party Committee Xie Gao Hua saw more and more Yiwu street selling a variety of goods in the crowd, in the political situation is not yet very clear, decided to put these street stalls back to a suitable place, and then decided to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a large shed. The prototype of the small commodity market was born. According to local news reports in Yiwu, because of this incident, Xie Gao Hua, a local cadre to the retirement of the local people are highly respected, the first generation of Yiwu businessmen will often send some gifts to the old man has no power. In a sense, the construction of a shed itself is a small matter, but in the eyes of the public, is a level of government to the original who cares about the state of the market's recognition.　　And what was Zong Chengying doing at this time? He was running a single gang. "At that time I went to Guangxi to do business, at first it was in Liuzhou Guilin stalls, selling or daily necessities, and it is what all sell. But the source of goods slowly from the southern part of the place to Yiwu local, because at this time Yiwu people already have a lot of goods from the southern part of the take to the local sale, they take a large amount of goods, the price is much cheaper than we take. And we will take goods in Yiwu to sell to the field to go, all year round in the outside world to sell, come back a few times a year only." Zong fresh in his memory is Guangxi's thieves are particularly numerous. "But they don't quite dare to steal from Yiwu people, because at that time there were already a lot of Yiwu people there, and very united with each other, thieves know that stealing from Yiwu people caught is very bad, and often will be beaten half to death. So our power in the local area is also very big."　　"Then the local area also started to build a market, so we went into the market to operate. And my business scope was narrowed down, I remember a long time on selling buttons, and began to have a division of labor with my family, someone specializing in Yiwu and Wenzhou Qiaotou to get the goods, and I sold them on the Guangxi side. At that time, Zhejiang people in Guangxi side is also more and more, business profits are very thin. However, my business is good, earn is the money out of stock, I often turn in the market, try to do to the time and people are not the same as the arrival of a large number of other goods to the time I do not ship, looking for a large number of stalls fast out of stock when I let Yiwu send me. Because the clothing factory to the task is not counted, and time is very tight, if the market more goods they press the price, no goods when you go up a point or two they also want. This kind of business earns a lot."　　This stage of the Yiwu Small Commodity Market basically rely on Zong Chengying such merchants selling goods outside to support. With the country then a large number of stalls and shed type small commodity market there is not much difference, if you have to say the difference is to support the market merchants because of the vision of the difference between the local distribution of goods to sell a little more or a little less difference. Zong Chengying and other local businessmen in the market in Guangxi difference, will ultimately make Yiwu in the small commodity market to stand out - commercial reasoning is very simple, because more shipments, take the price of goods on the cheap, if you can always maintain this cheap price, this distribution center will become a depression. Depression effect and the expansion of the types of "slowly, people in other places know that Yiwu take goods cheaper, a lot of local people in Guangxi also began to Yiwu take goods. These people in the local market is more stable, we began to turn." Zong said. This is the expansion of the depression effect. In the late 1990s, Yiwu's reputation began to grow, and this reputation was an extremely important part of the expansion of the Yiwu market. When businessmen from all over the country began to run to Yiwu, this small commodity market has become a large domestic wholesale market, while other places in the small commodity market has become its retail place. At this time, its position in the country has begun to solidify.　　And what was Zong Chengying doing at this time? He switched to lace.　　"The Taiwanese called lace lace at the time, and it was a very cheap product on their side because it was all machine-processed. But there were very few factories in China that processed lace by machine, and the price was expensive. So we do business with them in Fujian, in fact, we know very well that many Fujianese are smuggling goods from Taiwan fishing boats, this we can not do, and do not dare to do. At that time, we did business is to buy lace in the hands of Fujian people, and then to Yiwu to sell. Because Yiwu's cheap clothing accessories already have a considerable reputation, many garment factories to take. Business and simple money and earn more, is my business since the best period of time." At this time, Zong Chengying has been in Yiwu Small Commodity Market has a few stalls. And from a macro point of view, he and many Yiwu businessmen, at this time to do is to expand the business scope of this small commodity market, from the business varieties to further consolidate the status of this market. If the low price of Yiwu's small commodities came to prominence, the gradual completion of the variety of its magnetic force to further expand. One-stop shopping is the idea of all factories and businessmen, and Zong's efforts are adding this power to Yiwu. And at this point, Zong Chengying's younger brother is in the sock business, and he picks up his goods in a place called Zhuji Datang near Yiwu, a town that has been known as the sock town until now. "The socks business is longer than my lace business, because places like Xiaoshan in Zhejiang were quick to introduce lace machines, producing lace much cheaper than the Taiwan side. At the beginning of Taiwan lace can also be to color variety to win, but soon this side to catch up. That's when I went back to Yiwu and joined my brother in the sock business." Zong said. "This time the market in Yiwu began to expand, in addition to the gradual distribution of several markets, I remember Huangyuan and several other markets were built at that time, the business of the small commodity market or too good to be true. Our brother's stall to buy early, so the location is good, a lot of business, but the goods on the home often can not keep up, this time my brother moved to run the factory idea." For the expansion of Yiwu market, now in Hangzhou Alibaba company as director of strategic development Xie Shihuang studied for a long time. Xie's company, Alibaba, is the world's largest B2B website, the most active piece of the new economy. But Xie makes no secret of the fact that the development of the Yiwu market has been a great inspiration for Alibaba. It is the Yiwu market that Alibaba mulls over regularly. "Different guests have different needs, small merchants like to squeeze around in the shed-style market, because they want to be cheap. And big business people deal a transaction may be hundreds of millions of dollars, the price of a little difference may be a very large amount, of course they want to trade more comfort. These nuances of the guests, do the market can not be ignored. This is the way to have more and more prosperous business." The Zong brothers discussed the matter of running a factory in the industry for a long time, because going into the industry was really not an easy thing to make up one's mind, but since the sales were good, they finally made up their minds. "I say, if we want to go into industry, we have to get in the best machines and make the best things. We have to pull away from the low-grade goods over in Datang to have a sale." This is how Zong Chengying recalled their considerations when setting up the factory. As a matter of fact, the Zong brothers' consideration stepped on the point again. After 1995, due to the increasing sales volume, Yiwu people found that building a factory around the small commodity market has been a more cost-effective thing. Because just a small commodity market in a single species of sales, but also has been enough to play a factory's production capacity. And mastering the industry, for the merchants in the small commodity market, on the one hand, it reduces the transportation and transaction costs, more importantly, the factory in their own hands makes them the combination of industry and commerce, can be more understanding of the market than both individual merchants and factories, and also more comfortable. "Our luck is good, because almost at the time when our factory was put into production, foreigners began to appear in Yiwu. They demanded more mid-range and high-end products and placed larger orders. But the price is very fierce, good thing we have a factory in the hand, if we can not do the order, in the market certainly no one can do, even in most places in China can not do, so foreign sales rose very quickly. A lot of low-grade goods and they can not see, so they will eventually come to us. Soon our factory was in a state of saturation, and until now it has been very tight. In the past, the factory's first-line sock weavers were paid more than 500 yuan a month with food and housing, but the flow of people was too great. Because of the tight production, I calculated that it is not cost-effective to let them flow at low wages, so then simply give all employees a one-time increase to 750 yuan, so that they are stabilized." For Zhejiang's Wenzhou and Yiwu two big businessmen to support the city, well versed in the Zhejiang business way of Zhejiang University Department of Economics Professor Shi Jinchuan more optimistic about Yiwu. "Because Yiwu is more open, gather all the merchants in the world to Yiwu, let them earn the wholesale and retail price difference, and then let foreigners enter their own countries with localized commerce, which is obviously more beneficial to selling Chinese products.