Make the world within reach—capture opportunities from around the globe with BusinessNet. On October 14, Yiwu's landmark sixth-generation market project—the Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center—officially opened with great fanfare! From the vibrant energy of the first-generation street markets to the cloud-based ecosystem of the sixth-generation digital marketplace, Yiwu has, over more than four decades, seamlessly transitioned from "buying globally" to "selling globally"—and now to "intelligently connecting globally."

It was introduced that the Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center project was launched in 2022, with a total construction area of 1.25 million square meters. Centered around three main themes—new trade, new markets, and new landmarks—the project is comprehensively advancing the upgrade of four core elements: "people, goods, venues, and supply chains." The project is strategically laid out across five key functional zones: a marketplace, commercial office buildings, a vibrant retail district, residential apartments, and the Digital Trade Port. Notably, the marketplace zone boasts a floor area of 410,000 square meters and has already attracted merchants from eight emerging industries, including fashion jewelry, creative trendy toys, and smart equipment. Among these businesses, "second-generation entrepreneurs," "second-generation innovators," and "new-generation" operators account for 52%, while merchants owning their own brands or offering IP-based products make up 57% of the total.

Meanwhile, the Global Digital Trade Center empowers commerce through digital innovation, drives trade with data insights, and shapes the future through immersive scenarios. It is strategically positioning "1" high-level digital trade hub, strengthening "3" key digital trade platforms—Chinagoods, Zhijie Yuangang, and "YiPay"—while simultaneously enabling "N" diverse digital application scenarios. Together, these efforts are fully dedicated to delivering the best possible digital trade services: optimizing efficiency, minimizing costs, and maximizing outcomes.

From the "World Supermarket" to the Global Digital Trade Hub, and from "Goods Flowing Across the Globe" to "Digital Chains Connecting the World"—this transformative leap further underscores Yiwu's fundamental shift from being driven by traditional experience to being powered by digital technology. It integrates the "ant-like mighty force" of small, micro, and medium-sized enterprises into the global digital ecosystem, with its insights and practices serving as a model for the digital transformation of the real economy—both domestically and across the globe.

Yiwu, a city built on its markets, boasts a success story that extends far beyond the sheer scale of being the "Global Small-Commodity Trading Hub." At its core, the city’s true value lies in its remarkable ability to create and successfully nurture a highly open, globally influential business ecosystem—driven primarily by countless small, medium, and micro enterprises—and sustained collaboratively by both government support and market dynamics.

For more than 40 years, Yiwu Market has consistently moved forward in step with the times—evolving from its humble beginnings as a street-side market to its current cluster layout as the "World Supermarket," seamlessly adapting to each transformative shift in business models. It has kept pace with every upgrade in procurement methods, transitioning from traditional "face-to-face" negotiations offline to cutting-edge "screen-to-screen" transactions online. Moreover, the market has embraced every breakthrough in trade model innovation, shifting from conventional foreign trade import-export practices to the seamless delivery of small cross-border e-commerce parcels directly to consumers. Beyond that, Yiwu Market has proactively tackled challenges in deeper areas of reform, pioneering high-standard pilot programs for comprehensive international trade reforms—and continuing to push forward with even more ambitious initiatives to deepen these reforms further. To date, it has successfully undertaken 48 nationally recognized innovation pilots and an additional 115 provincial-level or higher pilot projects, giving rise to over 20 significant institutional innovations.

New scenarios emerge one after another, fresh product offerings surge forth, and new faces gather in abundance—yet these are merely the prologue to this digital trade revolution. In the future, Yiwu Digital Trade will connect "the entire journey of a single product," integrate "the full-service ecosystem of a single platform," and consolidate "the comprehensive data resources of a central hub"—all working together to powerfully drive "global buying and selling, seamless goods flow across the world, and a digitally linked global economy!"