In the year when the 14th Five-Year Plan came to a successful conclusion and the 15th Five-Year Plan set sail, Yiwu implemented precise policies and made systematic efforts. Many core market data performed outstandingly:

Trade data has set a new record. In 2025, the total volume of imports and exports in Yiwu City exceeded 800 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 836.50 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 25.1%. Among them, exports reached 730.7 billion yuan, increasing by 24.1% year-on-year. Imports reached 105.8 billion yuan, up 32.3% year-on-year.

The trade market is becoming more diverse. In 2025, the number of countries and regions that have import and export trade with Yiwu City will reach over 230. Among them, the import and export volume with emerging markets such as Africa, Latin America and ASEAN will be 150.7 billion yuan, 127.43 billion yuan and 93.95 billion yuan respectively, increasing by 23.4%, 14.1% and 46.7% year-on-year respectively.

The variety of export commodities has become more abundant. In 2025, Yiwu City's export commodities covered 5,900 categories, representing a year-on-year growth of 6.0%. Exports of mechanical and electrical products reached 268.94 billion yuan, up 25.1% year-on-year, accounting for 36.8%. The export of cultural goods reached 68.13 billion yuan, increasing by 19.8% year-on-year. Christmas supplies exports reached 5.65 billion yuan, up 17.0% year-on-year.

The trading entities have become more active. In 2025, the number of foreign trade enterprises in Yiwu City with actual import and export performance reached 13,385, an increase of 3,696 compared with the same period in 2024. Among them, the import and export volume of private enterprises reached 826.64 billion yuan, increasing by 24.9% year-on-year. Foreign-funded enterprises' imports and exports reached 9.85 billion yuan, increasing by 39.1% year-on-year.

In 2025, before the release of the Joint Statement on Domestic and Foreign Economic and Trade Talks among China, the United States and Japan, the United States imposed tariffs on China five times in total, including two "fentanyl tariffs" and three "equivalent tariffs". The US has successively upgraded its tariff measures, seriously damaging the normal economic and trade exchanges between China and the US. The Yiwu Index, through visits to markets and industrial belts, has deeply interpreted the impact of this trade war on the small commodity industry in Yiwu.

The United States is the largest single-country export market for Yiwu. According to the data monitoring of Yiwu Index, there are over 3,000 merchants in Yiwu International Trade City participating in trade with the United States, among which more than 100 are directly engaged in trade with the United States. In 2024, Yiwu's foreign trade export volume to the United States reached 83.57 billion yuan. From January to May 2025, the export volume to the United States exceeded 40 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of approximately 43%. Despite the superimposition of multiple rounds of tariffs, Yiwu's exports to the United States have still maintained a high growth rate, with limited impact on the overall market of Yiwu.

Facing the complex international trade environment, the Yiwu market has demonstrated strong resilience. As of November 2025, Yiwu's foreign trade export volume to the United States reached 98.548 billion yuan, increasing by 26.88% year-on-year. Relying on its well-developed small commodity industrial system, flexible and efficient fulfillment capacity, and mature market mechanism, Yiwu Market effectively offsets the impact brought by fluctuations in tariff policies. Meanwhile, merchants in Yiwu are also accelerating the expansion of orders to markets in "Belt and Road" countries such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, enhancing their ability to diversify in the global market.

The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing from December 10th to 11th. The conference made arrangements for economic work in 2026, involving eight "key tasks". The meeting clearly placed promoting consumption and expanding domestic demand at the top of a series of economic tasks. Among them, there are three key tasks that are beneficial to the development of Yiwu market:

First, we will adhere to the principle of domestic demand taking the lead and build a strong domestic market, including the in-depth implementation of special actions to boost consumption. Expand the supply of high-quality goods and services, etc. This will further unleash the potential of mass consumption, providing a more stable market space for small commodity consumption characterized by high frequency, essential needs, and strong price elasticity. The demand for categories such as festival supplies, daily necessities, and cultural and creative gifts is expected to continue to be released. At the same time, it will also force products to optimize in design, packaging, and user experience to better meet personalized and self-pleasing consumption demands.

Second, we will adhere to innovation-driven development and accelerate the cultivation and expansion of new growth drivers, including implementing a new round of high-quality development actions for key industrial chains and deepening and expanding "artificial intelligence Plus", etc. At present, many merchants in Yiwu Market have applied AI to scenarios such as product design and sampling, image generation, product selection analysis, and multi-language product introduction, to enhance the efficiency of new product launches. Some production processes have been transformed through automated and semi-automated equipment to shorten the delivery cycle, promoting the shift of small commodities from "rapid replication" to "rapid iteration".

Third, we will adhere to opening up to the outside world and promote win-win cooperation in multiple fields, including promoting high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative and actively developing digital trade and green trade. More and more merchants from Yiwu are actively going global through forms such as cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses and overseas exhibitions. At the same time, standards should be gradually raised in aspects such as packaging reduction and the application of environmentally friendly materials, promoting the transformation of foreign trade from "competing on scale" to "competing on quality and stability", laying a foundation for the high-quality development of the industry.

On October 14, 2025, the core project of the sixth-generation market in Yiwu - the Global Digital Trade Center - officially opened. This marks the completion of a new round of iteration and upgrading for the Yiwu Market, initiating a new process of leaping from traditional trade models to digital trade ecosystems, and forging ahead towards building a global trade benchmark that is digital, international, modern and low-carbon.

The Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center project was launched in 2022, with a construction area of 1.25 million square meters. The project centers on three main lines: new trade, new markets, and new landmarks, comprehensively promoting the upgrading of the four core elements of "people, goods, places, and chains", and laying out five functional sections: markets, business office buildings, commercial streets, apartments, and digital trade ports. Among them, the market section has a construction area of 410,000 square meters. Merchants from 8 new industries including fashion jewelry, creative collectible toys, and intelligent equipment have settled in. "Second-generation businesspeople", "second-generation innovators", and "new generation" account for 52%, and merchants with their own brands or operating IP products account for 57%.

Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center Image Source: Yiwu Index

The year 2025 marks the beginning of deepening the comprehensive reform of international trade in Yiwu. Over the past year, Yiwu has achieved some innovative and reform results in many aspects:

First, the innovative development of import trade has been deepened. As the only enterprise on the import white list, the Mall Group completed the trial orders of 28 types of positive list imported goods and 5 types of parallel imported home appliances by 2025.

Second, we will build a global digital trade highland and deepen the integrated development of "live streaming + platforms + cross-border e-commerce". In the first ten months of 2025, Yiwu achieved an e-commerce transaction volume of 472.152 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.60%, among which the cross-border e-commerce transaction volume was 144.982 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of nearly 24%.

Third, we will accelerate the construction of the China-Europe Railway Express assembly center. By 2025, the number of Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe Railway Express trains is expected to exceed 3,000, with a year-on-year growth of 14.8%. All core indicators will reach record highs, and the scale of operation will continue to rank among the top in the country.

As the comprehensive reform of international trade continues to deepen, Yiwu is accelerating the construction of a more efficient, higher-quality and more resilient international trade system, and its overall competitiveness is expected to achieve a new leap on the existing basis.

In 2025, LABUBU caught the wave of new consumption. This "little monster" with sharp teeth even made it to an auction, setting a new record with an auction price of 1.08 million yuan. Small commodities such as Douyin and stress-relieving toys, which offer both emotional release and a sense of participation, continue to sell well and have become a "new necessity" among young consumers.

In early 2026, a Year of the Horse doll made in Yiwu unexpectedly became a popular favorite across the Internet because its mouth was sewn in the wrong direction, changing from a "smiling horse" to a "crying horse".

The successive emergence of these phenomenon-level products is a concentrated manifestation of emotional consumption in the small commodity sector and also reflects the inherent ability of Yiwu Market to repeatedly produce bestsellers. Long-term alignment with terminal consumer demands and rapid capture of changes in consumer sentiment have become the norm for product innovation in Yiwu. Through rapid sampling, small-batch trial and error, and flexible production, merchants in Yiwu can quickly transform abstract demands such as emotional expression, emotional companionship, and self-mockery and healing into concrete products, continuously boosting market heat.

Data shows that the market size of China's emotional economy reached 2.3 trillion yuan in 2024 and is expected to exceed 4.5 trillion yuan in 2029. For the Yiwu market, the explosion of emotional consumption is not a short-term trend but rather a microcosm of changes in product trends. By constantly producing best-selling products and responding to the public's emotional and aesthetic changes, the Yiwu market not only caters to consumer demands but also continuously shapes the product trends and innovation directions of small commodities.

The best-selling product "Crying Horse" in Yiwu Market. Image source: Yiwu Index

In 2025, AI swept the entire Internet. At the beginning of the year, China released the DeepSeek R1 inference model. In August, OpenAI released GPT-5. In December, Google released Gemini 3 Flash. Multiple large AI models were successively launched or updated, attracting widespread social attention. Global artificial intelligence technology is accelerating its innovation and iteration. The integration with various industries and fields has been continuously deepening.

In the Yiwu market, AI+ foreign trade has moved from concept to practical application. AI is being widely applied in actual business operations such as content generation and optimization, intelligent product selection analysis, response to customer inquiries, and cross-border communication assistance, focusing on key links like product development, trade matching, and fulfillment services. This helps merchants reduce operating costs, improve transaction efficiency, and shorten the transaction cycle. For small commodity trade characterized by small batches, multiple categories and quick response, AI is gradually becoming a booster for foreign trade work.

Meanwhile, the vertical field trade large model (" World Yiwu "large model) jointly developed by the Mall Group and Alibaba Cloud was officially launched in October 2025, and a total of 13 AI applications have been introduced. At present, the number of registered users of the "World Yiwu" large model APP has exceeded 56,000, making the "Yiwu Experience" replicable and empowering, equipping small commodity trade with an "intelligent brain", and promoting the evolution of foreign trade models towards a more intelligent and efficient direction.

The source of the "World Yiwu" large model image: Yiwu Index

The sound of the rattle drums spreads far and wide, and the camel bells along the Silk Road have endured for over a thousand years. On December 28th, the Central Radio and Television Station held a sub-venue release event for the "2026 Spring Festival Gala", officially announcing that Harbin, Yiwu, Hefei and Yibin would become sub-venues for the gala, jointly presenting this cultural feast that attracts global Chinese attention with the main venue in Beijing.

As the only city in Zhejiang Province to be selected as a sub-venue for the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, Yiwu's appearance on the Spring Festival Gala sub-venue stage not only showcases the city's image as a "world supermarket" in a concentrated manner, but also brings a huge traffic window to the small commodity industry. From commercial scenes, Silk Road culture to international elements, what Yiwu represents is precisely the true microcosm of China's small commodities connecting the world. The IP effect of the Spring Festival Gala has further amplified the popularity of the "World Supermarket". "Follow the Spring Festival Gala to Yiwu" has become a hot topic on social media platforms. The combination of the Spring Festival Gala effect and the peak season for New Year's goods consumption and cross-border trade has further increased Yiwu's attention in domestic and international markets, and also provided new imagination space for the integration of "culture + trade" and "traffic + industry".

In 2025, the Mall Group, centering on the significant mission of "small commodities, large markets, and continuous creation of new glories", accelerated the innovative development of the market and the transformation and upgrading of the enterprise, achieving remarkable results in all aspects of its work.

Business performance: The operating income for the first three quarters was 13.061 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 23.07%. The net profit attributable to the parent company in the first three quarters was 3.457 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 48.45%.

Market operation: Yiwu Market has made a leap to the sixth-generation market, with its business area increasing to 8 million square meters and over 80,000 business stalls. By 2025, the Yiwu China Small Commodities City Market is expected to achieve a sample transaction volume of over 320 billion yuan, with an average daily footfall of over 230,000 people, among which the average daily number of foreign merchants will exceed 4,000, reaching a 10-year high.

Brand going global 32 new overseas projects were added, including 4 overseas sub-markets such as Osaka, Japan; Piskek, Kyrgyzstan; Luanda, Angola; and Melbourne, Australia; 13 self-operated/cooperative overseas warehouses such as Chicago, USA; and Lagos, Nigeria; 8 overseas exhibition halls such as Kenya, Italy, and Mexico; and 6 Yiwu Fair overseas exhibitions in South Korea, Indonesia, and Mexico. And one overseas national station in Kenya.

On September 22, 2025, after completing the loading of over 1,000 TEUs of containers at the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, the "Istanbul Bridge" set sail in the early morning of September 23, traveling via the Arctic shipping route to the Port of Frexstowe in the UK. This marked the official launch of the China-Europe Arctic Container Express Route (referred to as "China-Europe Arctic Express"). In addition, among the over a thousand boxes of goods that set sail this time, more than 20% of the goods originated from Yiwu, including various items such as Christmas supplies and daily necessities.

The Arctic shipping route has comparative advantages over the traditional European route in terms of distance and time efficiency, providing an additional option for Yiwu export enterprises in addition to "freight trains + sea transportation". The maiden voyage will carry not only various e-commerce products with time sensitivity requirements, but also battery products with safety requirements and high-value-added energy storage cabinets, etc. It will ensure direct docking and quick container pick-up, precisely connecting with the peak cargo preparation periods such as the European Christmas season and Black Friday.

On October 13th, a container printed with the words "Felixstowe Port Welcomes China-Europe Arctic Express" was seen at the Port of Felixstowe in the UK. Source: Xinhua News Agency