People shop at the Yiwu International Trade Market in Yiwu City, east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb 2, 2023. About 75,000 merchants at the Yiwu International Trade Market on Thursday welcomed their first business day in the Year of the Rabbit. （Photo/Xinhua）

The China Commodities City Group Co in Zhejiang announced on Wednesday plans to build a global digitalized free trade center in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province, aiming to integrate digital technologies and digital infrastructure with the small commodities sector in the province.

According to the announcement, the company plans to invest 8.32 billion yuan ($1.21 billion) into the project which will cover an expected 1.24 million square meters and will be finished within four years. 

The global digital trade center will integrate manufacturing, exhibition, logistics & storage and customs checking, serving each component of the small commodities industrial chain. 

The project will serve as a demonstration site and will likely be replicated across all commodities markets in the country, in order to help both Yiwu's local industry and the company to achieve sustainable development, the announcement said.

The announcement added that Yiwu has become the world's largest small commodities distribution hub thanks to four decades of earnest development, which is recognized as the world's largest commodieties market by the multiple international authorities including the United Nations and the World Bank. 

In 2022, Yiwu recorded exports of 431.64 billion yuan, up 18 percent year-on-year. Yiwu was also the departure station of China-Europe freight train and operated 2,269 trains in 2022, transporting commodities from Yiwu to European countries via land ports in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, official data showed. 

In the first two months of 2023, Yiwu's China Small Commodities City realized 30.62 billion yuan of trade volume, up 4.7 percent year-on-year. The city's total foreign trade volume reached 79.19 billion yuan, up 7.4 percent year-on-year, including 72.9 billion yuan of exports, increasing by 6.7 percent over 2022 levels,according to Zhejiang's statistics department.

Editor: Xiao Da, Lou Shihang (intern)