Wenzhou
Commercial Activities
Apart from manufacturing, Wenzhou is also a well-developed market place or trading centre. By end-2002, there were 499 commodity markets, or wholesale marts, trading different kinds of light industrial or consumer products, with 68 of them have annual transactions over RMB100 million. The total number of stalls in these markets amounted to 88,108 in 2002 and the largest commodity market has over 4,600 stalls. These markets serve as an effective platform for sourcing and selling.
Wenzhou Network
The success of Wenzhou as a trading center can also be attributed to the tradition for Wenzhou people to travel extensively in conducting trading business. According to a study by the Wenzhou government, there were 15.4 million Wenzhou people (about 20.8% of the permanent resident population) working or doing business all over China in 2001. These people created RMB56.3 billion gross domestic product, equivalent to 60.4% of Wenzhou鈥檚 GDP. Sales revenue of the trading activities conducted by these Wenzhou people was estimated to reach RMB240 billion. As of end-2001, Wenzhou people have invested an estimated cumulative amount of RMB105 billion outside Wenzhou, setting up a total of 15,700 manufacturing plants with gross industrial output at RMB110 billion, more than half of Wenzhou鈥檚 gross industrial output.
Many Wenzhou people are also travelling to work or conduct business in overseas. It was estimated that there are about 0.5 million Wenzhou people living in Europe and a Wenzhou Overseas Chinese Associations Federation was established in Rotterdam in January 2003. The large number of Wenzhou people networks both in China and overseas also contributed to the development of Wenzhou's trading activities.
