Gifts / Sports & Toys

This August, in order to fight the battle of epidemic prevention and control as quickly as possible, Yiwu, a super international trade distribution center, pressed the pause button and experienced a 10-day silent period.

However, since the silence period was lifted on the 21st, Yiwu businessman Liu Liwei has spent a busy time comparable to the "Double Eleven".

"Every day, we arrange delivery. We first send out the backlogged goods, and then notify customers that the order production has returned to normal, and we can place orders with confidence," said Liu Liwei. This merchant, whose main products are small accessories, has seen a significant reduction in online orders during the 10-day silent period, but some of its fixed customers are still stable and have not been hurt.

In contrast, Yiwu Jiumu Arts & Crafts Company, which focuses on international trade, is even more busy.

"Every August is the time to prepare goods for Western Christmas. Before the extension of the silent period, we don't know when it will resume. We are worried that foreign customers will cancel orders, and we are also worried that the goods will not be shipped and face huge compensation. We expected much better." said the relevant person in charge of Yiwu Jiumu Arts and Crafts.

On August 24th, 49 foreign businessmen from India and Pakistan came to Yiwu International Trade City with orders and started an offline purchasing journey. As the first batch of foreign businessmen, after them, there will be hundreds of businessmen who come to China to purchase by business charter flights to restart intensive purchases.

In addition, a number of policies are also on the way to help Yiwu, the "world's small commodity capital", recover its vitality quickly.

The big test of the small commodity market

On August 2, a new round of epidemic broke out in Yiwu, and 4 positive cases of new coronary pneumonia were found in Yiwu centralized isolation point. Subsequently, the epidemic began to expand. In order to prevent and control the epidemic, Yiwu issued the "Notice on Implementing Temporary Global Silence Management", requiring silence from August 11-14, and then postponed to 0:00 on August 21.

He was caught off guard by the epidemic and the 10-day silent management. Jiumu was faced with both domestic and foreign pressures.

The 10-day silent period, for e-commerce sellers, the impact is not as simple as doing business for a few days less. On the one hand, many buyers were unwilling to wait, and the number of e-commerce orders that were canceled increased rapidly; on the other hand, some people were not clear about the outage of express delivery, and the inquiries about delivery time also increased suddenly.

"Watching the cancellation of one order after another" has become the norm for Yiwu merchants in those days.

Yiwu is known as the world's largest small commodity wholesale market by the United Nations, the World Bank and other authoritative institutions. In the first half of this year, driven by e-commerce, Yiwu's express delivery business volume and express delivery business revenue ranked among the top five in the city, of which the express delivery business volume reached 6.47 billion, ranking first; Yiwu Bureau of Statistics data shows that Yiwu's express delivery service business business A total of 4.245 billion pieces were completed, which was the same as the same period last year, and a total of 12.2 billion yuan in business revenue, an increase of 11.3% year-on-year. In 2021, Yiwu will export 290.16 billion yuan through market procurement trade, accounting for 31.2% of the country's total.

It is also for this reason that the daily operation of Yiwu affects the heartstrings of merchants all over the world.

From 0:00 on August 21st, after the whole area of Yiwu was lifted from the silent management, all enterprises and express delivery companies were in a hurry. Data show that on August 21, the express delivery business volume reached 34.77 million pieces. On August 22, Yiwu sent 39.74 million pieces of express delivery, an increase of 32.5% compared with the average daily express volume before the epidemic.

For international trade, the situation is even more pressing

As the "Small Commodity Capital of the World", Yiwu is not only home to a large number of foreign trade factories, but also the source of supply chains for many cross-border sellers. By convention, August is the Christmas shipping season. Shipping generally takes two to three months. If it can't be shipped before the end of August, it is very likely that it won't catch up with the Christmas promotion in a few months. Currently, two-thirds of the world's Christmas products, including Christmas trees, Christmas hats, greeting cards, ribbons and decorative lights, come from Yiwu.

The silent period brings not only the problem of difficult delivery, but also the suspension of production and production, which makes merchants feel uncertain. The industrial chain is often linked together, and the suspension of production and production disrupted the arrangement of the factory and directly affected the entire chain. It is also for this reason that after the silent management, foreign trade merchants ushered in a wave of "small climax" in delivery.

It is worth noting that even in the silent period, the "Yi-Xin-Europe" China-Europe train showed strong resilience and vigorous vitality, and kept running. On August 16, under the supervision of Yiwu Customs, the 1,000th train of the "Yi-Xin-Europe" China-Europe train, which will be launched on the Yiwu platform in 2022, departs from the Yiwu railway port. During the period, Yiwu platform shipped a total of 66 trains, an increase of 59.4% month-on-month, providing a stable and smooth international trade logistics transportation channel for the "world's small commodity capital".

Import and export still maintained rapid growth

Previously, under the background of weak global economic recovery and the impact of the epidemic, Yiwu was faced with the practical challenges of a decrease in orders from old customers and the inability of new customers to come in.

Since April this year, Zhejiang began to explore the business charter model, bringing a large number of foreign customers to China. In this context, Yiwu has handed over a foreign trade report card with many bright spots under the severe situation this year.

The relevant person in charge of the Yiwu Municipal Bureau of Commerce said that in order to speed up the recovery of foreign trade imports and exports, foreign trade enterprises will resume work and production by means of "commitment to prepare a case + post-event verification". The bottom line is in place and the commitment to epidemic prevention and control is in place.

At the same time, on August 25, the "Customs Release" news stated that the ninth edition of the "People's Republic of China Exit/Entry Health Declaration Card" will be launched on August 31. Compared with the current version, the content is more optimized. Specifically: canceled the declaration requirements for entry-exit personnel nucleic acid testing information, previous infection status, and vaccination date; improved or adjusted items that were easy to be questioned by entry-exit personnel in the past, which is more convenient for entry-exit personnel to understand and fill in; increase The function of online confirmation of the "Informed Consent for Sampling" has been established, which makes it easier for inbound and outbound passengers to simplify the on-site quarantine process and work together to do a good job in front-line health quarantine at the port.

Under a series of policies, my country's import and export still maintained rapid growth. According to data released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange recently, in July this year, my country's international trade in goods and services reached 3,915.1 billion yuan, an increase of 11% year-on-year. Among them, the export of goods trade was 1,931.1 billion yuan, and the import was 1,515.5 billion yuan; the export of service trade was 204 billion yuan, and the import was 264.4 billion yuan. In service trade, the import and export scale of transportation services was 187.4 billion yuan, the import and export scale of other business services was 83.5 billion yuan, the import and export scale of travel services was 68.5 billion yuan, and the import and export scale of telecommunications, computer and information services was 48.8 billion yuan.

With the implementation of the country's package of policies and measures to stabilize the economy, various tasks such as stabilizing foreign trade have been accelerated, and the vitality of international trade market players has been effectively stimulated, and the scale of my country's trade in goods and services has continued to grow.