On October 29th, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the opening ceremony of the special seminar for provincial and ministerial level leading cadres to study and implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, stating that it is very important to widely consolidate consensus and fully mobilize all positive factors for the smooth promotion of reform, in order to effectively guide public opinion on reform, strengthen positive propaganda, sing the main melody, and transmit positive energy.
Yiwu is a city that rose in the tide of reform and opening up, and its development process can be called a miracle: starting from a small business selling "chicken feathers for sugar" along the streets, it has developed into the largest small commodity market in Asia. The fifth generation small commodity market in Yiwu has a business area of over 6.4 million square meters, gathering more than 2.1 million types of goods from 26 major categories. It is associated with over 2.1 million enterprises and 32 million industrial workers in China, and has trade relations with more than 230 countries and regions. From 2018 to 2023, the export scale of Yiwu increased from 252.16 billion yuan to over 500 billion yuan. In 2023, the number of operating entities in Yiwu market will exceed one million, and the number of express deliveries will exceed 10 billion, becoming the first county-level city in China with an annual express delivery volume exceeding 10 billion.
These stunning numbers are enough to make people feel the vitality of Yiwu.
From serving as the Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee to becoming the highest leader of the Party and the country, Comrade Xi Jinping has visited Yiwu more than ten times in over 20 years. He vividly summarized the development of Yiwu in three words: "inexplicable", "out of nothing", and "turning stones into gold".