Connecting Globe with Yiwu market

Yiwu is internationally known as a wholesale commodity center, with people from all over the world pouring into the city to buy manufactured goods for retail in other parts of China and abroad.

Yiwu market has become a shopping paradise with its large variety of quality but cheap products.

Located around 100 kilometers from Zhejiang’s capital Hangzhou, Yiwu’s commodity market distributes ornaments, zippers, cosmetics, shirts, cultural products, pens, toys, lighters, souvenirs, kitchen apparel, buttons and gadgets.

Sony, who has a store in Mangga Dua shopping center, said a lot of Indonesian merchants from Padang and North Sumatra on business in Yiwu rented apartments to cut accommodation costs and to be able to cook themselves halal meals.

Although most vendors have difficulty speaking English, the language barrier can be easily resolved by flashing a calculator screen to show prices and using hand signals when bargaining.

Yiwu was once a sugar cane center, but was developed into a merchandise trade center in 1982. The market has a total area of 2.6 million square meters, housing more than 58,000 stands selling 400,000 different commodities in 1,900 categories and 43 industries.

It is the world’s largest market of small commodities, with an average of 200,000 buyers visiting each day.

Foreign trade accounts for more than 55 percent of transactions at the market. Over 400 containers of goods are exported to 215 countries and regions.

In late 2006, the Zhejiang provincial administration established the Yiwu China Commodity Index, aimed at measuring the prices of consumer goods in China.

The index covers 17 categories of goods, such as jewelry and ornaments, arts and crafts, and shoes and garments. Overall, 2,443 different commodities and 2,412 stores are used to collect the index data.

The government also expects the index to help solve problems with market information accuracy and to provide better guidance for millions of manufacturing enterprises and traders. It also aims to strengthen control over the pricing of consumer goods in the world.