HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 27, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The advertisement "Miracles in China, Commerce in Yiwu" recently aired in Times Square in New York City, showcasing Yiwu, China at the "Crossroads of the World".
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.
In 2017, Yiwu's small commodity market was ranked 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 once considered a crisis for the market-place emerged, Yiwu managed to turn the situation around by deploying e-business as the engine for a new round of transformation.
The city launched a program of training 300,000 e-commerce talents in two years, established e-commerce industry guidance fund, set up e-commerce parks and worked to establish e-commerce platforms that could connect third party platforms such as Alibaba, Amazon and eBay.
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.
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 has now become 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.
