Yiwu, a county-level city in East China's Zhejiang province, consolidated its strength in trade and commerce in 2021.

The city is often dubbed the "world's supermarket", as it is home to the largest wholesale market for small commodities such as toys, socks, hair accessories, and plastic containers. Around 80 percent of Christmas decorations worldwide come from Yiwu.

The city's permanent resident population is nearly 2 million, and it is home to nearly 800,000 market entities. In other words, roughly one in every three Yiwu locals is a business owner.

In 2021, the city's foreign trade surged 24.7 percent year on year to 390 billion yuan ($61.35 billion). Online retail sales stood at 218.79 billion yuan, higher than any other county-level region in the province.

Zhejiang China Commodities City Group (CCC), the State-controlled company that operates the Yiwu wholesale market, reported 4.126 billion yuan in operating revenue over the first three quarters of last year, delivering double-digit growth compared with the same period in 2020 and 2019.

More than 10,000 shops and 5 million Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) of products landed on Chinagoods, a CCC-launched multilingual online global e-commerce platform, throughout 2021.

As many as 20 livestream e-commerce bases, exceeding 300,000 square meters in total area, were established in Yiwu last year.