Yiwu: A Belt and Road success story lauded by President Xi

Known as "the world's supermarket", Yiwu, a county-level city in Zhejiang province, amazes the world with its trade connections to over 230 countries and regions globally. It has become an important hub city of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The China-Europe freight train from Yiwu to Madrid is an important bridge of Eurasian connectivity and one of the first outcomes of the Belt and Road, President Xi Jinping said when meeting with then Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy in Beijing in 2017.

Yiwu, now a famous production hub for small commodities and a growing global trade hub, faced growth problems in the early 2000s as it led the country in pioneering opening-up.

Xi attaches great importance to Yiwu's development. On Dec 27, 2002, Xi, then secretary of the Communist Party of China Zhejiang Provincial Committee, visited Yiwu for the first time and praised its strategy of building an international trade city.

Since then, Xi has made over 10 fact-finding trips to Yiwu, guiding its shift from domestic to foreign trade and promoting the reform of removing institutional bottlenecks that had held its private economy back from rapid growth.

During a visit to the Yiwu International Trade Market in 2023, Xi said that Yiwu's small commodities have grown into a big market and created a big industry, and it is so great for Yiwu to have made such achievements.