Source: Yiwu sourcing agent Author: Date: 2009-06-12
On the left-hand wall of Xu Liang's trading booth are a selection of framed verses from the Koran and an oil painting of Mecca . On the opposite side hangs a neon back-lit image of Vishnu,teasingly adjacent to three different sizes of crucifix(M,L,XL) and a portrait of Buddha looking admi rably serene about i t all.
These li ttle beauti es,she says,are selling incredibly well in Italy . Few places so monstrously and precisely define China's commercial ambition as Yiwu,a city 120 miles south of Shanghai. Ms Liang's mis sion is to extract orders for hundreds or thousands of Last Suppers,so that the factory 30 miles away can get on with churning them out and freighting them west .
Other storeholders pursue a similar goal for more or less every product imaginable,from vacuum cleaners,Christmas decorations, knock-off iPods and shirt buttons to bidets,Wellington boots,LCD televisions and shaving foam . It is the goods'destination that is most significant:not Wal-Mart , Carrefour and Tesco ,but the millions of small shops and traders
in emerging markets whose aggregate buying-power is vast and growing .The guiding principle is not so much that the customer is always right,but that the customer is always everyone.
At present,the faltering global recovery has kept crude oil and commodities far below their peak and the slump in European and American consumption is not helping . The goods in Yiwu,say the buyers,are constantly improving.
As China's trade tendrils stretch further,the quality of demand is rising in lock-step with quantity .
The sheer weight of this micro trade,starts in Yiwu and ends in a Brazilian night-market or a Yemeni souk,particularly with the Middle East,may prove pivotal in China's quest for global influence . Placed in its rightful global context,the Yiwu market,Ben Simpfendorfer, RBS's chief China economist, argues,stands at the eastern end of a New Si lk Road,a nexus of trade
links between China and the Middle East that may soon assume colossal geopolitical and economic importance.
And the growth of that importance can now be measured.
Liang's dai ly pace of trade,in combination with hundreds of other Yiwu traders,feeds data i nto the “Yiwu Index”,a numerical reckoning of the flow of small goods leaving the world's biggest wholesale market and a kind of barium meal for tracking the rising scale and sophistication of the “Made in China” brand.
When the Yiwu Index does begin to advance more strongly again,its trajectory will describe China's global growth as Beijing would love to be known around the world：the neutral merchant in a partisan bazaar . The same principle applies to its flight path as a soaring geopolitical power . Yiwu, its customers and its astonishing array of goods bear far more scrutiny by the outside world than they currently receive ：on one viewing,it's the biggest trove of tat conceived by mankind; on another,the birthplace of a New World Order of trade.
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