An aerial photo of Yiwu, a county-level city of Jinhua, Zhejiang province. [Photo/Jinhua Daily]
Zhang Jiying, founder of Zhejiang Real Star Umbrella Co, made friends with 118 new foreign businessmen via WeChat during the 28th China Yiwu International Commodity Fair ending on Nov 27.
Zhang started selling umbrellas in Yiwu in 1997. That year, Zhang made her first foreign trade order with a client from Pakistan. She discovered the potential of foreign trade and started learning English and other foreign languages.
Zhang also witnessed the internationalization of Yiwu's wholesale market. Today, Zhang makes deals with more than 4,000 foreign buyers and exports her products to over 100 countries and regions.
In 2005, Yiwu's international trade exceeded domestic trade for the first time. In August that year, the Yiwu International Trade Market was recognized by authoritative world organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank as the world's largest supermarket for daily commodities.
Nowadays, Yiwu's wholesale market brings together 2.1 million commodities in 26 major categories from across the country and exports them to 233 countries and regions. Thousands of new products are launched every day.
From January to October this year, Yiwu saw its exports rise 23 percent year-on-year to 360.75 billion yuan ($51.89 billion), surpassing its total exports in 2021.
In 2021, Yiwu's imports reached 24.39 billion yuan, compared with 2.36 billion yuan in 2013. In the first 10 months of the year, the city's imports totaled 32.99 billion yuan and are expected to exceed 40 billion yuan by the end of the year.
