A seminar on "20 Years of Promoting the Yiwu Development Experience — Safe Construction and the Modernization of Grassroots Social Governance" was held in Yiwu, Zhejiang, on October 11, bringing together government representatives, experts, and scholars to explore the security formula behind the "world's capital of small commodities," People's Daily Online reported on October 12.
Yiwu, a county with a population flow rate exceeding 50%, has built its governance model around the market. The city's market operating area now exceeds 8 million square meters, driving the development of 110 industrial belts nationwide. Each year, more than 2.1 million kinds of goods are shipped from Yiwu to over 230 countries and regions.
Zhu Chaohui, deputy mayor of Yiwu and head of the municipal public security bureau, said the bureau has focused on safeguarding market development by pushing an international trade legal services cluster into the market, building the province's first cross-border e-commerce IP protection coordination center, and establishing the country's first account-freezing assistance center.
Li Qingming, a researcher at the Institute of International Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said local practice is the source of innovation in foreign-related rule of law. He cited Yiwu's market procurement trade method rising from local pilot to national system, its "foreigners mediating foreigners" dispute resolution recognized by foreign businesspeople, and the Global Digital Trade Center's pioneering of digital trade rules as evidence that local governments can be "first inventors" of foreign-related legal innovation.
The seminar was hosted by Northwest University of Political Science and Law and the Yiwu municipal government. The university said it will leverage its Yiwu research institute to provide intellectual support on grassroots governance, commercial dispute resolution, and the strategy for Yiwu goods going global.
