On the evening of May 8, restaurants with cuisines from all over the world were overcrowded near Chouzhou North Road in Yiwu. Among the bustling crowd, chatter in Chinese, English, and Arabic mixed with the attractive aroma of exotic foods to give the impression of being in a foreign country.

Known as a Global Supermarket, Yiwu has trade relations with more than 230 countries and regions across the globe. Its market is more than 65% export-oriented. Since the regular opening of the market this year, many foreign businessmen have returned to Yiwu. The market has an average daily traffic of more than 200,000 people, and the daily average of visiting foreign businessmen exceed 1,600, a year-on-year increase of 30%. At present, there are more than 10,000 foreign businessmen stationed in Yiwu, and more than 5,000 foreign businessmen stay in hotels every night.

Niros is the general manager of the Yiwu branch of the Lulu International Group. His company operates more than 270 shopping centers and supermarkets around the world, many of which utilize products that come from Yiwu. Niros told reporters that in the past few years, the company's annual purchase amount in East China was about 70 million USD. This year, as the economic situation continues to improve, they are striving to increases the purchase amount to 100 million USD.

In the first quarter of this year, Yiwu's total import and export value reached 118.44 billion RMB, an increase of 11.4% year-on-year. Among them, exports were 107.09 bn RMB, a year-on-year increase of 11.0%; imports were 11.35 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.6%. The cumulative growth rate of imports and exports was 6.6, exports were 4.9, and imports were 14.5 percentage points higher than that of the whole province respectively. Among them, the markets of Latin America and the European Union grew rapidly.

In the first quarter of this year, Yiwu’s imports and exports to Africa were 20.85 bn RMB, an increase of 13.8%; imports and exports to Latin America were 17.23 bn RMB, an increase of 27.4%; imports and exports to the EU were 16.17 bn RMB, an increase of 26.5%. During the same period, the total import and export to countries along the Belt and Road was 46.84 bn RMB, an increase of 11.8%. (By Qian Xusheng, translated by Jiang Yifan, edited by Daniel Haws)