"Since 2000, foreign trade in Yiwu has been developing in a blowout way, so many businesspeople prefer to expand exports," she said. "The crisis has made them change their conceptions of only relying on exports and pay attention to domestic sales. In the long run, the crisis also will make them attach importance to establishing their own brands and protecting intellectual property rights."

Song said the local government has adopted various measures to help businesspeople get over the negative impacts of the economic crisis. For example, the Yiwu Municipal Government encourages enterprises to increase the added value of the products they manufacture and establish famous brands. It is granting every Yiwu enterprise that establishes a China famous brand 1 million yuan ($146,413).

The local government also has expanded financing sources for businesspeople. According to Wang Songbing, Deputy Director of the General Office of the Yiwu Administration for Industry and Commerce, companies are allowed to invest in new ventures with their stock ownership. They also are allowed to mortgage their stalls for small-scale loans.

The global economic crisis has forced other manufacturers to change the way they do business in order to survive. Yiwu Shuaipai Leather Articles Co. Ltd., which exports 90 percent of its handbags under the brand "Shuaipai," is a case in point. Sensing difficulties on the international market in the second half of 2007, the company purchased an existing trademark called "Dansally" for high-end domestic market sales. Although the sales volume of Dansally is still one fifth of Shuaipai, the per-piece profit of Dansally handbags is several times higher, offsetting the decrease in exports, said Chen Yueqing, the company's manager. The crisis also has forced the company to improve its management and control operating costs, which were not carefully looked after when business was flourishing, she added.

Others who have managed to corner foreign markets by producing a one-of-a-kind product have largely remained untouched by the global economic crisis. Yiwu Andong Electric Appliance Co. Ltd., for instance, is only one of a dozen Chinese producers of electric fireplaces and owns more than 30 international patents. The company, which accounts for one third of the country's total output of electric fireplaces, had revenue of 120 million yuan ($17.52 million) in 2007, according to Zhu Hongfeng, Yiwu Andong's President. He estimates that its sales in 2008 will surpass 200 million yuan ($29.2 million), because orders from European countries and the United States have increased fourfold this year.

Yiwu in Numbers

Located in central Zhejiang Province and 300 km south of Shanghai, Yiwu covers

an area of 1,105 square km. The registered population is 720,000, while the migrant population totals 1.1 million.

By the end of November, there were 113,000 individual industrial and commercial households and 14,000 companies. There were 2,053 representative offices of foreign enterprises from 81 countries or regions.

From January to October this year, Yiwu's exports totaled nearly $1.6 billion, up 15.38 percent year on year.

As of October 20, there were 62,000 stalls at the Yiwu market, covering an area of 4 million square meters. Altogether 1.7 million kinds of commodities in 16 categories are traded there. The market's total transaction volume reached 46.1 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) in 2007, the largest of the country's daily commodities wholesale markets by revenue for 17 successive years.

Source: Information Office of Yiwu Municipal Government, Yiwu Administration for Industry and Commerce and Jinhua Customs