April 24 – Topic: Xi Jinping Gives Yiwu a “New Big Coat”
“This place is neither near the sea nor the border, so how did it become a global trade center?”
In September 2023, this question was raised during an inspection in Yiwu, Zhejiang.
Yiwu, a county-level city in central Zhejiang, is home to the “world’s largest small commodity wholesale market” and is known as the “world’s supermarket.”
Here, the small commodity market has over 1.26 million business entities, trades with more than 230 countries and regions, and the international trade city sees an average daily footfall of over 220,000 people…
During that inspection, it was emphasized that Yiwu’s small commodities have broken into a big market and built a big industry. Reaching this point is remarkable, and everyone is a participant, builder, and contributor.
As early as the end of 2002, shortly after being transferred from Fujian to serve as the Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, Xi Jinping visited Yiwu International Trade City for an inspection. During his work in Zhejiang, he visited Yiwu more than ten times and frequently conducted in-depth research in the small commodity market.
At the beginning of reform and opening up, grassroots commercial activities quickly spurred Yiwu’s development. However, by the early 2000s, Yiwu’s small commodity trade faced severe competition, with market turnover stagnating, and the extensive trade model caused Yiwu’s development to hit a bottleneck.
During his research, Xi Jinping keenly noticed that rapidly developing Yiwu was encountering various institutional and systemic obstacles. For example, restricted by its county-level administrative status, Yiwu’s local bank credit, export customs clearance, and other permissions could not match its high-speed export growth demands.
Xi Jinping vividly illustrated these institutional mismatches with a metaphor: a child grows too fast, but the clothes are too small, so we need to “give the fast-growing child a new big coat.”
This metaphor not only captured the transformation pattern of China’s county economy but also grasped the development pattern of reform and opening up.
From expanding reforms to increase economic and social management authority, to exploring new types of international trade, and to “tailoring” market procurement trade methods… Yiwu, having “put on a big coat,” has continuously unleashed its development vitality.
Twenty years ago, on June 8, 2006, Xi Jinping held a symposium in Yiwu’s Hengtang Village to discuss learning from Yiwu’s development experience. At that time, he vividly summarized Yiwu’s development in twelve words: “inexplicable,” “creating something from nothing,” and “turning stone into gold.”
The bold and innovative “Yiwu Development Experience” embodies Xi Jinping’s profound thinking on developing county economies and is a vivid annotation of the vigorous growth of Zhejiang’s private economy since reform and opening up.
In recent years, Yiwu has continued to write a new chapter of “small commodities, big market,” growing from a regional market into a global market. In 2025, its foreign trade export value ranked first among counties (cities, districts) nationwide.
Recently, an important directive was made, pointing out that Yiwu’s small commodities have broken into a big market and built a big industry, forming the “Yiwu Development Experience.” This is a successful practice of developing county economies according to local conditions.
It was emphasized, “It is necessary to combine the study and education of establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements, and further summarize and apply the ‘Yiwu Development Experience.'”
How to do it? The words contain a clear path: “Guide various regions to base themselves on their own resource endowments, respect the pioneering spirit of the grassroots and the masses, reform and innovate, work hard and persistently, explore and follow a high-quality development path that suits their respective realities, and better serve and integrate into the overall national development landscape.”
As the “15th Five-Year Plan” begins, facing new situations and challenges, the development philosophy and view of political achievements contained in the “Yiwu Development Experience” provide beneficial inspiration
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