Yiwu: The Creation of a Global Market Town in China

Belguidoum, Saïd; Pliez, Olivier

doi:10.4000/articulo.2863

Cited by 27 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Analysts have described the supply routes between Yiwu, a wholesale market city in China's commercially vibrant Zhejiang province, and its outpost markets in Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, as a new 'Silk Road' (Belguidoum and Pliez 2012Broadman 2007;Simpfendorfer 2009). Belguidoum and Pliez (2016) note that the influence of Yiwu 'has grown to such an extent that the city has become the main destination for North African importers'. Their studies of Yiwu's emergence as a transregional trading hub document the trajectories of Algerian and Egyptian transnational entrepreneurs whom they see as fashioning new Silk Roads between China, the Arab world and Africa (Belguidoum and Pliez 2012.…”

Section: Commercial Geographies Of China-middle East Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A related argument is that with the revival of this route, the Middle East now no longer looks principally west to Europe and the USA to source most of its consumer goods, but rather East to China (Simpfendorfer 2009). Several accounts of this newly invigorated transregional commerce emphasize that the emergence of transnational economic networks of Arab and Middle Eastern merchants connecting China to the Middle Eastern markets has been fostered by China's 'Muslim diplomacy' (Belguidoum and Pliez 2016;Gladney 1994). These accounts conceive of Yiwu's transnational economic networks as embedded in a shared Muslim culture, which has been specifically materialized in the creation of an Arab-Muslim ethnic enclave in the city of Yiwu Pliez 2012, 2016).…”

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Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies

Anderson

2020

Global Networks

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This article offers a different theorization of the commercial geographies and economic networks that connect China to the Middle East from those associated with the metaphor of the ‘Silk Road’. Many accounts of the recent and ongoing internationalization of the Chinese trade in small commodities through the well‐known market city of Yiwu describe the increasingly significant flows of commerce between China and the Middle East in these terms. In this article, I propose an alternative theoretical frame, arguing that the commercial geographies fashioned by Arab traders in Yiwu are, rather, formed through a dynamic relation of competition and cooperation between a series of distinct but overlapping Eurasian political geographies which have been in process from the 1970s onwards. Analysts have also often highlighted the Muslim and Arab ethnic nature of the transnational economic networks that connect Yiwu to markets across the Middle East. But rather than adopting a network governance approach, which sees these networks as embedded in a shared culture or ethnicity that furnishes the possibility of trust, I adopt a structural analysis approach in which traders act as brokers, moving and mediating between different geographies. I argue that they act strategically to keep several contexts in play at once because they are faced with an unforeseeable future and marginal citizenship rights.

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Section: Commercial Geographies Of China-middle East Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies

Anderson

2020

Global Networks

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“…Meanwhile, other businesspeople ventured to Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, the world’s largest market for small commodities. By the early 2000s, Yiwu was an important trading post for traders from the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan (Belguidoum & Pliez 2015; Marsden 2017).…”

Section: Shifting Trading Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Somali Ventures in China: Trade and Mobility in a Transnational Economy

Lochery¹

2020

Afr. stud. rev.

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Abstract:Research on Somali mobility and migration has predominantly focused on forced migration from Somalia and diaspora communities in Western Europe and North America, neglecting other experiences and destinations. This article traces the journeys of Somali traders from East Africa to China, mapping the growth of a transnational trading economy that has offered a stable career path to a few but a chance to scrape by for many others. Understandings of migration and mobility must encompass these precarious terrains, allowing for a richer examination of how individuals have navigated war, displacement, and political and economic change by investing in transnational livelihoods, not just via ties to the West, but through the myriad connections linking African economies to the Gulf and Asia.

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“…16 Not all, but many, of the traders who operate from Yiwu work within and identify with extensively scattered trading communities that bear comparison with trading networks, 17 19 Of all these foreign traders, those arriving from West Asia constitute the majority in Yiwu. 20 Especially visible in the city are traders from Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, Iraq (both Arabs and Kurds) and Iran (Persian, Azeri and Kurds). Yiwu thus is an important meeting point for long-distance trading networks, and a city that has come to be thought of by the city's inhabitants and its international visitors as especially attractive to Muslim traders.…”

Section: Yiwu: International Trading City In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Afghanistan’s Cosmopolitan Trading Networks: A View from Yiwu, China

Марсден¹,

Ibañez-Tirado²

2018

Challenging Cosmopolitanism

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This chapter explores Afghan trading networks that are active across a variety of Eurasian contexts. These predominantly, but not exclusively, Muslim traders have come to fill important niches in the forms of economic activity often identified by anthropology as representing ‘globalisation from below’. This chapter emphasises ethnographically the culturally flexible dispositions of Afghan traders, while also bringing attention to the analytical issues that are raised when they are thought of as ‘Muslim cosmopolitans’. In particular this analysis highlights how 'armoured' forms of cosmopolitanism have been frequently visited on Afghanistan during its modern history, often meaning that mobility has been experienced by the country's people in the context of violence and coercion. We explore these issues through a focused ethnographic examination of the lives and activities of Afghan traders in the Chinese international trade city of Yiwu - a critically important node for this and other trading groups, communities and networks.

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Yiwu: The Creation of a Global Market Town in China

Cited by 27 publications

References 19 publications

Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies

Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies

Somali Ventures in China: Trade and Mobility in a Transnational Economy

Afghanistan’s Cosmopolitan Trading Networks: A View from Yiwu, China

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