Dubai businesspeople had developed imports and re-exports from Asia Lavergne on a regional Persian Gulf, Iran, Iraq in particular then a transcontinental scale Arab World and Africa. Khaled, a Lebanese restaurant owner, made the same discovery when he was a cook in Kuwait until his merchant friends convinced him to go invest in China because money could be made faster there.
Saad followed his friends, discovered Yiwu and now goes there every two months to prospect the markets and to check orders with his Chinese freight forwarder. Many small importers, however, tried to circumvent Dubai by going directly to the market-city. We ordered big quantities of specific goods and in Yiwu we could have shipping containers with multiple products.
Yiwu is not only visited by Arabs but also by non-Arab Muslims from all over the world. Such numbers of people have a visible impact on the city, which has materialized through specific conditions of hospitality and specializations of space that the city authorities are trying to organize.
It was also along this area that the authorities set up the immigration office. Figure 1: Markets in Yiwu. Source: Pliez, Belguidoum, Troin, This name gives the appearance of a cosmopolitan space oriented towards leisure and nightlife for passing traders as well as for Chinese or foreign residents of Yiwu, thereby effacing any marks of identity that are too strongly identified with one group or another.
A crossroads space, with its Uighur, Arab and Turkish restaurants and hotels, constitutes the focal point of this quarter. The islands are interconnected by streets and lanes that cross, forming grids. Shops for clothing, fabrics, religious articles an entire street is dedicated to this trade , freight forwarding offices, hotels, restaurants and hair salons are all there. The area then comes alive as restaurants and terraces fill up, often late into the night thanks to jetlag.
Wandering in exhibition halls then gives way to negotiation around a table or to a time for socializing among wholesalers from around the world and their intermediaries based in Yiwu. By the clothing and the languages spoken, Uighurs, the Huis nearly 10 million in China and half of all Chinese Muslims , Pakistanis, Afghans, Arabs, Turks and Africans can all be seen there. They smoke the hookah and drink tea or coffee on the terraces of restaurants and near sellers of skewered meat, while vendors and moneychangers occupy the sidewalks.
This quarter also meets the needs of visitors who only stay in Yiwu for hours for business and need familiar cultural reference points.
All of the main nationalities visiting Yiwu thus have their hotel-restaurants that serve as a place of contact for many passing wholesalers. In these restaurants — but also in the 15 hair salons or barbershops of the neighborhood — traders and residents arrange to meet up, discuss business or simply exchange news. All are Muslim and Arabic is their lingua franca Figure 3. The neighborhood is a condensed form of activity in Yiwu, a microcosm where wholesalers and new migrants interact although they are present throughout the city.
Pioneering figures from El Eulma near Setif opened their trading offices. The work of trading is to assist wholesalers with suppliers, serve as translator, participate in negotiations, deal with customs forms, verify the conformity of the goods and packing in the container, arrange shipping and serve as guarantor to the suppliers for payment. Like the Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese and Turks, which were the most numerous nationalities, a restaurant was opened in Yiwu by a freight forwarder from El Eulma, Algeria.
Originally called El Andaloucia then, after a change of ownership, Tassili , and finally El Bahdja , the restaurant played a key role in servicing passing wholesalers. Closed in because of an urban renewal project in this part of the neighborhood, this was the only restaurant run by an Algerian and it has not reopened since.
Yet meeting places for Algerians were quickly formed nearby: a fast-snack stand and two Chinese hotels opposite Exotic Street. The length of their stay varies but rarely exceeds ten days: the time needed to prospect, order and sometimes check the packing. The use of freight forwarding agents, called traders , enables them to quickly realize their business transactions.
Wholesalers who come for the first time necessarily have an address or a contact in Yiwu. They are taken care of as soon as they arrive so they can then finalize their orders quickly. Algerian wholesalers, whose exact number remains unknown, are increasingly likely to settle there. Following the pioneers, other Eulmis as well as young people from other places in the East Setif, Bordj Bou Arreridj, Constantine or Kabylia and Algiers imitate them: about of them have settled in Yiwu.
Two types of actors make up this permanent community: large traders and a myriad of newly settled people ready to try their luck. They manage large export businesses to Algeria and have a sizeable customer base. They employ a local workforce but also young people relatives or friends from Algeria.
In the last two to three years, a new generation of small traders has developed who, while competing with large offices, take advantage of the high volume of trade with Algeria to try to break into this market. Until they have a set of regular customers, they operate without declaring their business to the Chinese authorities by associating with Chinese freight forwarders who are often former translators then employed by the Algerian freight forwarders and who then open their own office or by working with large Algerian wholesalers.
The work of a freight forwarder also includes that of financial facilitator. Within this group, the same profiles can be found as in the Algerian community, although since they are more numerous, they have also taken multiple paths to reach Yiwu. Egyptian restaurants attract not only other Egyptians passing through Yiwu, but also many other nationals of Arab countries that cannot rely on the presence of a restaurant owned by someone from their country, such as the Algerians.
Often, their owners were transnational commerce pioneers who had a prior experience of migration to another country in the Persian Gulf.
There, they then established contacts that led them to come to China in increasing numbers and particularly Yiwu starting in the early s. However, while up to the mids the first restaurant owners had previously exercised this profession elsewhere, most of them now came to Yiwu working in the import business.
Faced with the difficulty of gaining a foothold in this competitive niche, many say it quickly became apparent to them that their most sensible — and more profitable — option was to open a restaurant by partnering with a Chinese person who would serve as a front man in exchange for being paid the rent. A certain short-lived stability was thus gained in restaurants and in jobs, as the restaurant owners would remain in one place for three to four years and then transfer the business to a family member or resell the restaurant.
Sometimes the restaurant would close and then reopen to go more upscale. At first, this experience is temporary and those who have tried it with a tourist visa must go every three months to Hong Kong to renew the visa. However, the growing business in Yiwu prompts some to open their own restaurant or cafeteria by borrowing money and after learning the trade from their boss.
Several of these restaurants have opened since , although they sometimes close just as quickly. The first Egyptians discovered Yiwu through various channels. Many are former emigrants from the Gulf who succeeded in their conversion to transnational entrepreneurship.
Some of them previously bought goods from European firms that relocated part of their business in China and abandoned certain sectors, preferring the variety of products made by local factories.
Not wanting to lose their buyers, they then invited those buyers to China to visit their newly relocated factories, but at the same time making them discover the interest of Yiwu for purchasing other products that fell within the scope of their business. Others were directly approached in Egypt by Chinese intermediaries or the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Egypt because they already occupied a central position among importers in Egypt.
They sometimes lose their initial capital in risky purchases but this is to the great benefit of the pioneers of the movement, some of whom have turned to servicing the importers. Several generations of importers and transnational wholesalers therefore rub shoulders in Yiwu: the homogeneous group of the early arrivals to China has gradually stratified into several groups that take advantage of or benefit from the presence of the others.
Internationalization was already in the making even before China officially joined the WTO in Long criticized by international bodies for their role in distributing counterfeit products, in both developed and developing countries, there are many actors behind this internationalization: city hall, the chamber of commerce, and the market management authority of the city.
From below, Yiwu reveals a geography of discrete networks woven by thousands of actors who have built real trade routes, marked by discrete marketplaces along the way, as they work around protectionist barriers, borders or laws to maintain the flow of trade. At the intersection of these two ways of thinking, there is the name Exotic Street, which has established a lasting Sino-foreign leisure quarter dominated by Arab restaurants since It reflects the high reactivity of the actors who participated in creating this area in line with the growth in trade.
However, the Arab presence is not limited to this quarter and other traders have been there before USA, Russia and other new groups have already begun to settle there: Turks, Iranians and Afghans Marsden Locally, new forms of governance for market areas with global reach and the cities that form the heart of those market regions are being experimented with.
In the wholesale markets of the city, the intensity of business transactions is growing even in times of economic downturn. The second floor has cabins and 6, sqm of retail area and is dedicated to the necktie market. District E: has cabins and a market area of 6, sqm, this district is dedicated to textiles and fabrics, accessories and decorative fabrics.
District 1 of International Trade Mart The International Trade Mart occupies a building area of , sqm with and is divided into five main business areas: subject of the market, shopping center, manufacturer outlet center, catering center and warehousing center. There are about booths and more than business entities in total. District 3 of International Trade Mart The District 3 of International Trade City District H has , sqm building area, over standard booths of 14 sqm on floor , more than booths of sqm on floor and manufacturer outlet center on the fourth floor.
The industries in the market cover cultural products, sports products, cosmetics, eyeglasses, zippers, buttons and apparel accessories etc. The functioning area is 1. China Hotels Reservation all rights reserved. Yiwu Transportation. Yiwu information. Travel guide. Mexico City 17, Kilometer. Karachi 4, Kilometer. Delhi 3, Kilometer.
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