Qingtian county, located in the prefecture-level city of Lishui in East China's Zhejiang province, has a tradition of local people going abroad for business opportunities, which can be traced back 300 years. It is estimated that at present, there are about 330,000 Qingtian people running businesses in more than 120 countries and regions.

Since Qingtian launched its "Overseas Chinese Returning Project", more and more overseas Chinese have returned to their hometown to start a business undertaking, which has become an important driving force in promoting the county's economic and social development.

In order to give full play to the advantages of overseas Chinese, Qingtian county has put forward the idea of building an "international famous products distribution center" and has been developing an "Imported Commodity City" project since 2013.

The first phase of the Qingtian Imported Commodities City officially opened for business on Jan 27, 2015. The 15,000 square meters of floorspace in the market was snapped up by 55 overseas Chinese enterprises within two or three months.

Zhou Yong, who has spent 23 years doing business in Europe, was inspired by the establishment of the Imported Commodity City. He handed over his business in Venice, Italy to his children and returned to his hometown to open an imported daily necessities store.

"Many overseas Chinese have been working abroad for many years and now have certain economic strength. Of course, it would be the best if they could return to their hometown for its development," he added.

Local officials say the return of overseas Chinese businesspeople has become a real trend.

Mao Yanwei, vice president of the European Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Spain, is an example. What he did when he returned to Qingtian was to introduce high-quality Spanish wines there and he then promoted them to the whole country, using the Imported Commodity City.

In 2015, Mao astutely caught the business opportunity and set up a trading company in Qingtian with his friends.

Benefiting from the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train service, the company became an international promoter of Spanish wine. Today, with the development of the Imported Commodity City, the company's branches have increased from two to more than 30 and its franchise stores have increased from more than 10 to over 100.

In response to the booming business of imported red wine, the Qingtian Imported Commodity City launched a World Red Wine Center in January 2019 and held an Imported Wine Expo for three consecutive years, which created an integrated supply chain featuring wine promotions, exhibitions, tastings and industrial incubations.