Insights from Yiwu's Development Experience

Zhejiang Yiwu, from a resourcelimited inland countylevel city, has grown into a globally renowned center for small commodity trade, forming the representative “Yiwu development experience.” This article reviews Yiwu’s practices over more than 40 years in market development, institutional innovation, urbanrural coordination, and open development, and emphasizes that behind it lies the longterm accumulation of respecting the people’s pioneering spirit, following market principles, leveraging the role of the government, and adhering to reform and innovation. The article mentions that Yiwu began with spontaneous stalls and trading by the local people in its early days, and the local government gradually standardized the market through policies such as “allowing commerce,” promoting the shift of small commodity trade from street markets to specialized markets. Since then, Yiwu has advanced “tradeindustry linkage” around market demand, logistics system construction, and foreign trade transformation, continuously improving an open framework of coordinated land, sea, air, and internet connectivity, while persistently exploring new business forms such as crossborder ecommerce and digital trade. The article also points out that in the course of development, Yiwu has attached importance to areas such as common prosperity, urbanrural integration, education and healthcare, and ecological development, striving to maintain a balance between economic growth and social wellbeing. The author believes that the core of the Yiwu experience lies in basing itself on local realities, respecting grassroots creativity, grasping the relationship between the market and the government, and achieving highquality development through sustained effort over time.