2844, which is the total number of county-level administrative units in China as of the end of 2020.
In such a large and distinct administrative division system, four county towns became popular in China overnight.
Recently, in the "2020 China Census Sub-County Data" released by the State Council Leading Group Office for the Seventh National Census, four county-level cities, Kunshan in Jiangsu, Yiwu in Zhejiang, Cixi in Zhejiang and Jinjiang in Fujian, were arrested due to their population numbers. Defined as a type II large city.
They have also become the only four county-level cities among the 105 large cities in my country.
"Rome was not built in a day".
From a small county to a big city, their stories have their own wonderful stories, but they have the same goal.
Since the reform and opening up, Kunshan has seized the electronic information industry and ran all the way. Yiwu has been flying farther and farther under the halo of the global small commodity distribution center. Cixi has created the myth of China's small household appliance industry. shake".
The integration and symbiosis of industry and population has led to the prosperity and superiority of the four counties, but after the magnificent transformation, planning and governance have also become new issues for them, testing their vision and wisdom.
Booming: characteristic industries are booming
Yiwu has been very busy recently.
For the upcoming Qatar World Cup, Yiwu people are quite proud of the news that 100,000 footballs will be produced in 50 days.
According to an estimate by the Yiwu Sporting Goods Association, from footballs to flags and jerseys, "Made in Yiwu" accounts for almost 70% of the entire Qatar World Cup peripheral commodity market.
Entering the "Double 11" time, a large number of Taobao shop villages in Yiwu, Zhejiang have entered the busiest time of the year.
Zhou Dongliang is leading his acridine e-commerce company through their 9th "Double 11" in Yiwu.
Zhou Dongliang said with great emotion that since they started their business in Yiwu, their annual sales have jumped from several hundred thousand to eighty-nine million yuan.
Acridine is located in Liucun, Qingyan, Yiwu. In this place, which is called "the first village of online stores in China", there are more than 4,000 online stores of various types taking root. They issue an average of 160,000 tickets a day, and their annual sales can exceed 70%. billion.
Undoubtedly, the rise of e-commerce has opened up a window for Yiwu, the "commodity capital of the world".
"In recent years, with the development of live broadcasts and online stores, the sales market of our small commodities has been expanded." Chen Yihan, who is engaged in the retail industry in Yiwu, told a reporter from Beijing Business Daily.
But to be the "world capital of small commodities", it is obviously not enough to only focus on online stores. Yiwu has extended its other hand to logistics.
Zhao Lei (pseudonym), who has been in the express delivery industry for 6 years, has been eloquent about this. What he mentioned most is the surge in the number of express delivery orders.
"When we first entered the business in 2016, our company's daily express delivery volume was about 10,000-20,000 pieces, and now it can reach 300,000-400,000 pieces per day." Zhao Lei said.
Zhao Lei's experience is also Yiwu's experience.
From 2014 to 2021, Yiwu's annual express business volume increased rapidly from 360 million to 9.29 billion.
Following the development of logistics, Yiwu has also opened up the international market, and its commodities have been exported to more than 230 countries and regions around the world, with a market export degree of over 65%.
Driving about 200 kilometers from Yiwu, you can reach Cixi, another county-level city in Zhejiang.
Although they are not far apart, the industrial "aura" of the two is very different. Yiwu focuses on the export of small commodities, while Cixi is a traditional industrial power county.
In 2021, Cixi's annual GDP will reach 237.92 billion yuan, of which the industrial added value will be 135.79 billion yuan, contributing more than "half of the country" to GDP.
Among them, the home appliance industry is the largest pillar industry in Cixi, and a large number of well-known brands such as Bull, Fangtai, Pioneer and Hengkang are settled here.
"50% of the domestic and 60% of the world's small household appliances come from Cixi." Here, the myth of Cixi industry is the most attractive talk.
The data shows that there are about 2,000 home appliance enterprises in Cixi City, over 10,000 supporting enterprises, and a market size of more than 100 billion yuan. Taking the popular heater in the European market as an example, Cixi's annual output exceeds 25 million units, accounting for the total output of the country. of more than 30%.
Both are coastal cities, although Yiwu and Cixi have different industrial directions, but they are chasing each other on the foreign trade track.
In 2021, Cixi's total exports will be 102.7 billion yuan, ranking second among all counties and cities in Zhejiang, second only to Yiwu.
"The geographical feature of the coast can bring convenient transportation conditions and an open industrial atmosphere to the industrial development of the city, and also integrate the competitive spirit of connecting the world market and keeping pace with the times into the blood of urban development." Chief Economist of IPG China In an interview with a reporter from Beijing Business Daily, scholar Bai Wenxi commented on the rise of Yiwu and Cixi.
Also benefiting from the coastal geographical advantages is Jinjiang, which is located in the southeast of Fujian.
When it comes to domestic footwear and apparel brands, brands like Anta, 361°, Xtep, Septwolves, Hongxing Erke, and Noble Bird are popular options that cannot be avoided.
But perhaps few people know that these well-known brands come from Jinjiang, a small county on the southeast coast.
"Relying on the advantages of coastal areas and brands, the development of its footwear and apparel industry has obtained product innovation, market creativity, business operations, and the product market and raw material sources are highly connected to the world market and the Chinese hinterland. , "Jinjiang's market efficiency incubation with a high degree of specialization and division of labor has supported many influential shoe and apparel brands, thus forming the comparative advantage and industry competitiveness of the local leading industry and leading industry. "
Located on the coast, but not only the coast.
At present, relying on its own policy thrust and the collective blessing of major shoe and apparel manufacturers, Jinjiang has 15 characteristic industry labels such as the National Sports Industry Base, China's Shoes Capital, and the World Jacket Capital.
Among them, the output value of the footwear and apparel industry exceeds 200 billion yuan, and the output value of the textile industry exceeds 100 billion yuan.
Next, turn your attention to Kunshan, Jiangsu.
Manufacturing is the ballast of Kunshan.
In 2021, Kunshan's total industrial output value will historically hit the trillion-yuan mark, forming two hundred-billion-level industrial clusters, 12 ten-billion-level industrial clusters, and 934 enterprises with an output value exceeding 100 million yuan.
The industrial chain advantage is the soul of Kunshan's development.
Zhou Wei, secretary of the Kunshan Municipal Party Committee, once said in an interview with the media that Kunshan's investment promotion strategy has always been to insist on "what is missing".
There is such a commendable story: In order to build the whole industry chain of electronic information, Kunshan just took apart a laptop, and the more than 1,000 main components in it were recruited link by link according to the principle of "make up for what is missing". , attracting more and more enterprises, larger and larger scale, higher and higher grades, and the industry chain is also getting longer and longer.
Then, led by the leading industrial clusters of electronic information and high-end equipment, a number of subdivided industrial chains such as flat panel display, integrated circuits, biomedicine, and auto parts were completed in Kunshan.
At present, it has attracted more than 9,300 foreign-funded projects from 78 countries and regions to take root here. Nearly 2,300 high-tech enterprises have thrived here, and a number of cutting-edge leading enterprises such as Zhongke Controllable and Cambrian have come one after another.
Origin: Act according to local conditions
Pull the needle of time back to 40 years ago.
Yiwu is located inland, surrounded by mountains on three sides. The terrain is dominated by low-medium mountains and hills. Except for sugarcane, there are few crops suitable for cultivation.
"Running abroad, changing chicken feathers for sugar" is a true portrayal of Yiwu people at that time, and it is also a budding signal for small businesses to survive on the eve of reform.
On September 5, 1982, after extensive research, the Yiwu County Party Committee resolutely opened the small commodity market in Yiwu Huqingmen.
Subsequently, the No. 1 "Notice" of the Yiwu County Party Committee and the County Government was born: "Farmers are allowed to do business, farmers are allowed to enter the city, long-distance trafficking is allowed, and multi-channel competition is allowed."
With the unified movement of street vendors to the market regulated by the government, Yiwu Small Commodity City has been established since then, and has embarked on a veritable "road of small commodities".
Today, Small Commodity City has gradually formed a business ecology with 75,000 merchants and 2.1 million small and medium-sized enterprises in the industrial chain.
According to the latest data released by the Yiwu Market Development Commission, from January to September this year, Yiwu achieved an e-commerce transaction volume of 292.873 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.62%.
In 2010, when e-commerce was just emerging, Yiwu's e-commerce trade volume was only 25 billion yuan.
The rise of Cixi City also benefits from an export-oriented economy and policies that encourage entrepreneurship.
In 1988, Cixi began to embark on the development model of state-owned, collective, township, and private "four wheels", which triggered "thousands of households to set up enterprises, work hard to manage operations, enter the market through thousands of mountains and rivers, and do everything possible to innovate industries. ".
In the following year, the "three foreign linkages" of foreign trade, foreign investment and foreign economics became Cixi's export-driven strategy, and the level of opening to the outside world has been improved year by year.
"The competitiveness of Yiwu and Cixi comes from industrial clustering, urban-rural integration and globalization of resource allocation." Yang Yiqing, deputy dean of the Zhejiang Business Research Institute, Zhejiang Technology and Business University, analyzed that Yiwu and Cixi have gathered dozens of industries of varying scales. The scale and energy level of a considerable number of industrial clusters are in the forefront of the country in the world. Through the sharing and coordination mechanism within the cluster, industrial clusters have solved the problem of weak scale and competitiveness of individual enterprises to a certain extent.
Compared with Yiwu and Cixi, the development of Jinjiang has not been smooth.
In the 1980s, Jinjiang's footwear and apparel industry once relied on OEM (OEM), but this homogeneous production model has drawbacks such as low profits and lack of autonomy.
Subsequently, the strategy of "branding the city" was launched in Jinjiang in 1998, and tens of millions of bonuses fell into the pockets of brand enterprises. Septwolves, Xtep, Anta, 361°, Hongxing Erke, Peak, and Guirenniao almost all formed brand momentum during this period.
The next step is to seize the market.
In 1999, Anta took the lead in taking the marketing route of “celebrity + CCTV” in China, and invited Kong Linghui, the “Prince of Ping Pong”, as its image spokesperson.
The following year, Kong Linghui won the gold medal in the men's singles at the Sydney Olympic Games, and Anta became famous.
The path is effective, and other apparel companies in Jinjiang have followed suit.
Xtep signed the actor Nicholas Tse, Hongxing Erke signed the actor Chen Xiaochun, and the noble bird signed Andy Lau...
Celebrity effect drives the output value to soar. Data shows that in 2007, the output value of Jinjiang's textile and garment industry was 28.855 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.3%; the output value of the shoe and leather industry was 28.763 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.44%.
Over time, in 2017, the output value of Jinjiang's textile and garment industry was 112.461 billion yuan, and the output value of the shoe and tanning industry was 111.285 billion yuan, both nearly 4 times higher than ten years ago.
Statistics show that today, one pair of every five pairs of shoes in the world comes from Jinjiang.
Except for Li Ning, the top ten domestic sports brands are all from here.
In addition to the policy of reform and opening up, Kunshan has seized the historical opportunity that a large number of educated youth and employees of "third-tier" enterprises are eager to return to the city.
Therefore, from 1984 to 1992, Kunshan took the lead in the exploration of "running development zones at their own expense" and realized the start of industrial development.
At that time, Kunshan, which is located between Shanghai and Suzhou, took advantage of the location advantage of "East of Shanghai", introduced Shanghai's processing plants, and introduced third-tier enterprises and businesses in Sichuan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Jiangxi and other places through the "Xituo Third Line". The backbone, successfully realized the "peasant to work".
In 1992, Kunshan Development Zone was officially approved by the State Council as a national-level development zone.
Eight years later, Kunshan became the first export processing zone in China to be closed and operated, and the electronics industry, the giant engine of local development, ushered in a key node.
The story of the four counties has not yet been told.
What is the logic behind their ability to "build from scratch"?
Standing at the "metaverse" outlet, what ambitions do they have?
What new exam questions does the new tab in big cities bring to them?
Scan the QR code below to read the full article.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Fang Binnan Ran Lili Yuan Zerui / text