Refashioning “the world's capital of small commodities”: Yiwu's internationalization and digitalization: Fid-Bau Portal

Refashioning “the world's capital of small commodities”: Yiwu's internationalization and digitalization

Qian, Linliang / Lu, Peng / Wen, Meizhen

Abstract Yiwu has become one of China's most globally renowned cities since it is home to the world's largest wholesale marketplace, a fact that previous studies have attributed to a collaboration between state and market forces. Although sympathizing with this assertion, we argue that market players have been the core drivers at all stages of Yiwu's development, with the state playing a supporting role. Moreover, while previous research on Yiwu's market has identified local wholesalers as primary market players, we propose that Chinese wholesalers from elsewhere, e-commerce merchants, overseas Chinese merchants, and foreign merchants are all forces driving the market. By examining the entrepreneurial initiatives put forth by these different market players and the government at each stage of Yiwu's development from the early reform period to the present, and their effects on the city's economy, society, and culture, this article demonstrates the dual process of the world's entry into China and China's integration into the world, which offers new insights for the global cities research.

Highlights • Previous research attributes Yiwu’s success as the world’s largest wholesale marketplace to the collaboration between state and market forces, but we argue that market players are the core drivers at all stages in Yiwu’s development. • The case enriches the current urban China research and global cities research by de-centering the role of the state in China’s globalized urbanization and by showing how grassroots market forces may initiate a bottom-up development or even a globalization from below to fashion small cities like Yiwu into (semi-)global cities.