An Open Model of Yiwu-style Development
May 30, 2026, 21:23 Source: China News Service
By Fu Yangyang
In May, Zhejiang is growing hotter. Walking into the Yiwu market, the long corridors are bustling with people. On the wall, the slogan "An International City of Entrepreneurship with Affection and Justice" catches the eye. From the grassroots ventures of "feather-for-sugar" bartering in the past to today's "world supermarket" connecting the globe, Yiwu's growth has always been etched with the hallmark of openness.
Yiwu market is crowded with people. (Photo by Dong Yixin)
2026 marks the 20th year of studying and promoting "Yiwu Development Experience." Over the past two decades, this experience has continuously evolved, guiding Yiwu—a city without access to the sea or borders—to flourish. And when people look beyond market prosperity, the word "openness" is reflected in all aspects of local entrepreneurship: Yiwu promotes rural revitalization through clusters, invigorates industrial vitality with talent, and writes development stories through integration, providing a living footnote for the "Yiwu Development Experience" in the new era.
Clusters: Industrial Upgrading in Villages to Strengthen the Foundation
This year, the No. 1 Central Document explicitly proposed "promoting rural revitalization in an orderly and clustered manner." When rural construction shifts from "highlighting individual villages" to "clustered development," it naturally aligns with Yiwu's open character.
As a "city built on a market," Yiwu's industrial veins are deeply embedded in the rural fabric. Many villages are both agricultural spaces and the "seedbeds" of manufacturing. Yiwu has nearly 30,000 permanent foreign residents and all 56 ethnic groups. In many people's minds, this is a city without "outsiders."
In the context of Zhejiang's high-quality development and common prosperity demonstration zone, Yiwu has launched development plans for 16 key village clusters, with 10 clusters taking the lead in construction, forging a practical path with local characteristics.
Dachen Ercun Village in Dachen Town is a well-known "shirt township." Starting from the village-run Dachenjiang Garment Factory established in 1979, it once had about 100 garment factories. "At that time, the sounds of machines, pattern-making, and cutting were almost the background music of life. Many villagers built new houses and lived better lives by making shirts," recalled Liu Xuezhen, Party branch secretary and village committee director of Dachen Ercun.
However, the traditional decentralized small-workshop production model has gradually shown shortcomings, such as land constraints, dispersed production capacity, and low added value. How to make traditional rural industries "regenerate" became a key breakthrough for cluster development.
In 2025, the "Yiwu Digital and Intelligent Industrial Community" in Dachen Town was completed and opened, propelling the Dachen shirt industry into a new stage of digital empowerment and cluster development, driving coordinated growth in surrounding villages like Dachen Ercun, Dachen Sancun, and Duqiaocun.
In the industrial park, many companies regularly post flexible job information for trimming threads, packaging, and auxiliary processing. Villagers come to work during the slack season, allowing them to care for their families while earning extra income. This model has also spurred the development of supporting industries such as catering, supermarkets, and repair services, forming a common prosperity ecosystem of "industrial park + village + villagers."
Data shows that in 2025, the growth rate of per capita disposable income of rural residents in Yiwu outpaced that of urban residents for the 21st consecutive year. The urban-rural income ratio narrowed to 1.76, down 0.03 from the previous year, lower than the national average (2.31) and Zhejiang's provincial average (1.81).
Talent Attraction: Seizing the Key Variable to Stimulate Development
Looking back at Yiwu's development history, it seems somewhat "unreasonable" and difficult to find answers solely in economics textbooks. But in any case, "people" are the most critical variable. When villages open their arms to youth, seeds of development sprout.
In recent years, Yiwu has introduced a series of support policies to attract young people to rural areas—offering a reward of 30,000 yuan for newly added youth practice stations, and a subsidy of 10,000 yuan per session for organizers of agri-entrepreneur shared markets that meet requirements. The youth bring new business forms and aesthetics, turning rural "traffic" into "incremental growth."
Lizu Village was once an obscure small mountain village. Since 2017, Yiwu has implemented support policies for agri-entrepreneurs, providing venue rental subsidies and startup funding, attracting a group of urban youth to "settle down."
Yang Congyun, head of the "Spanish Ham and Red Wine Experience Store," was drawn by the entrepreneurial atmosphere of Lizu Village and extended her business to the countryside. She transports Spanish ham from Madrid to Yiwu via the "Yixinou" China-Europe Railway Express, then sells it nationwide through the powerful e-commerce and logistics system.
"The countryside can also engage in international trade. This redefines my imagination of entrepreneurial space," Yang Congyun said.
Today, Lizu Village has developed a unique rural commercial atmosphere: workshops, guesthouses, and tea houses are laid out in an orderly manner, blending rustic rural life with modern consumption scenes naturally. In 2025, the village received over 1 million tourists, with collective operating income reaching 2.45 million yuan.
Tourists admire the murals designed by the agri-entrepreneur team in Lizu Village. (Photo by Dong Yixin)
"The pace here is slower than in the city, allowing me to refine my products calmly, and I can also access government support policies. The entrepreneurial atmosphere is especially good," said Fu Yuhan, a post-95 youth who settled in the Huangshentang Employment and Entrepreneurship Base in Dachen Town.
For returning college students and agri-entrepreneurs, the village has created a "1-square-meter entrepreneurial space," providing low-cost workstations, product supply, and entrepreneurial guidance to help young people realize their dreams. In this village surrounded by mountains, some college students have received 1,000 orders for Chinese knots through live streaming alone, achieving low-cost entrepreneurship; others have led dozens of people in crochet projects, becoming "lead geese" in rural development.
As one of the first provinces to promote youth returning to rural areas, Zhejiang has cultivated over 108,000 agri-entrepreneurs. This year, the provincial government proposed to build a progressive incubation and growth system for youth entering rural areas, covering internships, employment, and entrepreneurship, and to establish more than 300 new youth practice stations.
Openness: Symbiosis of Chinese and Foreign Entrepreneurs, Exploring Development Boundaries
Currently, foreign businessmen from over 100 countries and regions work, study, and live in Yiwu. The inherent open genes allow Yiwu's "circle of friends" to transcend geographical limitations and embrace global talent, exploring new boundaries of development through integration and openness.
Foreign buyers inquire about products in front of a Yiwu store. (Photo by Dong Yixin)
In 2020, Jin Youbei from South Korea discovered during market research that Korean companies had low efficiency in directly connecting with China's supply chain, representing a huge market opportunity. Seizing the trend, he founded a supply chain operation agency focusing on Korea-China business matching—moving beyond traditional agency models to focus on "end-to-end" services covering the entire chain of procurement logistics, business communication, and quality control.
"I came to Yiwu alone to start my business, and now I have 35 partners," Jin Youbei said in an interview with China News Service. Apart from himself, all team members are Chinese. Together, they rely on Yiwu's well-established trade infrastructure, efficient logistics network, and strong industrial linkage to "make things happen."
Many tourists visiting Yiwu marvel on social media that in this small county town, you can "change countries for a meal" just by walking: after tasting authentic Arabian barbecue, head to the Korean-style street for fried chicken, and finish with an Egyptian juice—a culinary "world tour" with ease.
Locally, Turkish dessert chef Abdullah has opened three dessert shops, with fragrant sweets and rich coffee causing frequent "sold-out" orders. Fourteen years ago, when the "Nisari" Indian restaurant opened, Nepalese businessman Bisha never expected it to attract so many Chinese and foreign tourists; it once became a "gourmet club" for Indian and Nepalese businessmen in the Yangtze River Delta region.
Currently, Yiwu has over 500 foreign-funded catering establishments. They complement local snacks, create jobs, boost tourism, and tantalize the taste buds of global merchants.
Behind these cross-border entrepreneurship stories is Yiwu's solid support for deepening opening-up.
Adhering to the service concept of "Once you come to Yiwu, you are a Yiwu native," the city provides full-chain services for foreigners, including social insurance, medical care, housing, and children's education. As of 2025, over 9,300 foreigners have participated in Yiwu's pension insurance, more than 3,000 "Talent Cards" have been issued, and a cumulative 336,000 "Foreign Business Friend Cards" have been distributed.
When Yiwu-style development crosses regions and connects the world, a county-level "growth model" with both local characteristics and international vision becomes clearly visible. (End)
Editor: Chen Mengyi
