China is not just the workshop of the world; it is also a huge market. There are not just factories controlled by foreign capital, employing migrants in the city peripherals or old village units, mobilizing Fordist methods to mass-produce large quantities of consumer products for the whole world. There are also numerous zones of product movements and trade, rural and urban markets, wholesale and retail markets, run-of-the-mill and specialized markets, temporary and permanent trade fairs . Some of these zones are meeting points for Chinese producers, State-owned companies or, increasingly, private companies, and the rest of the world. The international buyers are not just salaried representatives of big globalized distribution firms but also independant small shopkeepers of developing countries (Africa, Middle-East, South Asia particularly); everybody comes to China to look for inexpensive products that meet the quality or variety requirements of their different clientele.
The oldest and most well known of these business zones is the Canton Fair, bringing together Chinese producers and foreign buyers. Since 1957, the international buyers, fond of Chinese products meet twice a year, in spring and autumn, in the Southern capital. Close to the British territory of Hong Kong, Canton has a history of its own, because it was, before the opium wars, the only port open to trade with the Westerners (in the framework of the Cohong system, association of a dozen patented Chinese businessmen holding a monopoly). In 1957, Chou Enlai opened the first trade. In October 2006, the Prime Minister Wen Jiabao inaugurated its hundredth edition. On this occasion, sign of the authorities’ will to reduce their business surplus vis-à-vis their foreign partners, the fair changed its name. From ‘Chinese Fair of export products’, it became ‘Chinese Fair of export and import products’. This hundredth edition put together more than 31 000 stands over 280 000 square metres covering two sites: Li Hua, a building constructed in 1974 in the city centre and Pazhou, with futuristic architecture, most recently inaugurated in the outskirts (i.e. a total exhibition surface area of more than 33 % in the 8 exhibition halls of the porte de Versailles at Paris, placed first among the French exhibition centres and fourth among the European ones).
Like in most markets in China, both in the context of manufactured goods or services, competition is extremely steep between trade fairs. Most of the best cities organize regular events for national and international buyers. Since 1991, for example, the ‘Import and Export trade fair of Eastern China’ is held at Shanghai in the beginning of March every year, co-organized, apart from the economic capital of the country, by the neighbouring provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi and Shandong and the two cities of Nankin and Ningbo. In March 2006, the trade fair brought together more than 5 000 stands over 103 500 square metres. In the big metropolises, like in the lesser important cities, the local, provincial and national authorities work together for the promotion of commercial events and are equipped with indispensable infrastructures: exhibition buildings, conference halls, catering and hotel infrastructures. The constructions of these buildings besides primarily participate in the urban reconfigurations; while the plant facilities are shifted, the setting-up of these plants in such and such an area partakes of amendments and development strategies of land resources. Another example, Hangzhou, capital of the rich province of Zhejiang and traditional holiday resort (because of its lake and landscapes) is becoming the Chinese capital for conferences. Since 2000, the ‘Trade fair of the West Lake’ has resumed. The city is well geared-up to restore the pioneer role that it enjoyed; from 1929, Hangzhou organized the first biggest ever international trade fair held in China. Its aim was to compete with the big World Fairs organized since the middle of the XIXth century in Europe and the United States, and it lasted 137 days. A museum celebrates this glorious story henceforth by the lakeside.
In this world of trade fairs, the city of Yiwu (province of Zhejiang) presents an original trajectory. 300 kilometres away from the South of Hangzhou, on the railway line that links the capital of Zhejiang with Nanchang (capital of Jiangxi), Yiwu was formerly a big rural market town. In a span of 20 years, it has become an agglomeration of about 1 million inhabitants (more than half of them are migrants) that includes about fifteen wholesale markets open permanently everyday, i.e. 50 000 stands over more than 2.5 million square metres. ‘Yiwu, the biggest wholesale market of the world’, ‘an ocean of goods’, such are the slogans relentlessly repeated on the city walls. It is presented like a sort of Babel of the globalized economy to the visitor. In such and such an area, thousands of square kilometres of socks will be found, in some others clothes, elsewhere some furniture, a bit further on toys, etc. More than 400 000 product categories are referenced. The oldest of these markets are simple concrete halls, exposed to the wind; every tradesman (often also a small producer) displays and then pack up his products again on very minimal wooden stalls. The most recent are the immense structures over several floors served by lifts and escalators, the tradesmen rent out (or buy) real shops equipped with computers and air conditioners. Hotels, restaurants and huge parking spaces are in the vicinity. The buyers from the Arab world (Middle East, Africa) are so great in number that Chinese Muslims come from the West of the country to settle down at Yiwu to work in the services that promote trade activity.
The paradox is therefore that in a globalized economy and where Internet plays a more and more important role, the meeting places between buyers and sellers are on the increase, at the very least in China. Is the face-to-face meeting still required? Is this an effect of developmental gap? We could assume that other forms of putting products into market (trading companies, mass marketing) will take over these markets, as if they were in their maximum phase of growth today. At a time when attention falls on the technological rise of the Chinese industry, we are perhaps forgetting too quickly that the trade activity there is still creating wealth intensely. These are reasons enough to conduct investigations on these globalized melting pots of commercial spaces. |
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30/12/14
from 01/04/12 to 31/03/13
