The county-level city of Yiwu in Zhejiang province is home to the world's largest small commodities market. CHINA DAILY

Yiwu, a county-level city in East China's Zhejiang province, is on a steady path to achieving common prosperity.

As of October, Yiwu, which has a permanent resident population of 1.86 million, had amassed more than 740,000 market entities. The city's GDP was 148.56 billion yuan ($23.23 billion) in 2020, up from 30 billion yuan in 2005, a 10.8 percent average annual growth rate over the 15 years. The city's GDP surged 15.5 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, the second highest growth rate among the 17 richest counties in the province.

Farmland in Yiwu has long been relatively scarce and barren, suitable not for rice plants, but for sugarcanes. For hundreds of years, many local peasants eked out a living by visiting households in neighboring regions to trade handmade brown sugar for feathers, an ingredient of primitive fertilizers urgently needed in Yiwu. The "feathers-for-sugar" is a centuries-old commercial tradition in the city.

Now the city is home to the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities. The market has established business ties with 2 million small and medium-sized companies in China and 233 other countries and regions. It offers 2.1 million types of commodities, which rake in around 500 billion yuan ($78.2 billion) in annual sales.

The descendants of "feathers-for-sugar" vendors have now become foreign trade entrepreneurs. The city's foreign trade was valued at 312.95 billion yuan in 2020, up from 9.675 billion yuan in 2005, delivering a staggering 26.1 percent average annual growth rate over the 15 years.

Yiwu businesspeople have established 74 overseas warehouses in 40 countries and regions, including Spain, Czech Republic, and Malaysia. By the end of this year, Zhejiang China Commodities City Group, the operator of the Yiwu wholesale market, will open its first overseas marketplace—the Dubai Yiwu China Commodities City. The huge market, located in the Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, will become the distribution center for Yiwu's entire market in the Middle East and North Africa.

Yiwu's prosperity also lies in rural revitalization. Since 2017, local authorities have developed 10 rural tourism routes spanning 280 kilometers in 112 administrative villages. The disposable income per capita among Yiwu's permanent rural residents stood at 42,158 yuan in 2020, surpassing 40,000 yuan for the first time.

Yiwu has also made strong efforts to bring prosperity to other regions in Zhejiang and beyond. With the accelerated construction of highways in recent years, numerous remote villages in Jinhua have been directly connected to the Yiwu market, and villagers have made a fortune by manufacturing small commodities ordered by Yiwu merchants.

Last July, Yiwu authorities launched a project entitled "Hundreds of Counties, Thousands of Commodities", which promotes agricultural and handcrafted goods made in China's underdeveloped regions.

To date, 33 Yiwu staffers have been dispatched to a total of 301 underdeveloped counties nationwide with the mission of selecting special local products to be sold in Yiwu. More than 10,000 kinds of products have entered the Yiwu market so far.

A vendor sorts holiday goods at a store in Yiwu, Zhejiang province. [Photo by QIAN XUSHENG/FOR CHINA DAILY]