A China-Europe freight train carrying medical supplies bound for Madrid of Spain departs from the city of Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, June 5, 2020.Photo:Xinhua

 

Although China's Yiwu, the world's largest wholesale market, started stricter epidemic control measures from Tuesday, businessmen reached by the Global Times said that their businesses were not severely impacted.
"Trucks with a unified national pass can still enter and leave Yiwu city. Before entering Yiwu, these truck drivers need to undergo nucleic acid testing at highway exits," a source close to the matter told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang Province activated a level-II COVID-19 emergency response starting at 4 am on Tuesday, which urged people not to leave Yiwu unless necessary. It also included strict controls on the entrances and exits of expressways, as well as national and provincial roads.
"The impact is not obvious at the moment. Key enterprises in Yiwu are carrying out nucleic acid tests for normal operation, whereas materials and our products are transported in and out of Yiwu as usual," Li Erqiao, general manager of Soton Daily Necessities Co, a plastic drinking straw company based in Yiwu, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
But Li said that the rates for bulk containers transported from Yiwu's Jinhua County to Ningbo-Zhoushan Port have jumped by two to three times due to the epidemic, while the shipments of full containers remained normal.
Yiwu has been making efforts to maintain logistics. It vowed to facilitate e-commerce logistics service by publishing a list of contacts for 175 branches of six delivery companies in the city on Monday, according to the WeChat account of Yiwu's economic planner.
"I haven't sent an intra-provincial highway express so far this year, with foreign clients in no rush for goods to be shipped and on-site exhibitions being cancelled," Zhang Jiying, who owns several umbrella stores in Yiwu, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
But she warned that the effects of the latest moves haven't emerged.
Production at Zhang's factory in Yiwu has been somewhat affected by the previous expressway closures in South China's Guangdong Province and East China's Fujian Province due to Omicron flare-ups, which delayed raw material transport.
Some Yiwu business operators projected a flat performance or even a decline for their sales and exports in 2022, due to global COVID-19 flare-ups and turbulence.
"Unlike past years, it seems that our foreign clients are not in a rush to receive products this year, with about 20 clients' orders still piled up at our warehouse," Zhang said. She said that her clients are mainly from Russia, Spain, Italy and France, and their businesses have been affected by the prolonged pandemic and international uncertainties like the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
"We are now waiting for our clients' notices for shipment," she said, noting that her company will focus on upgrading products to enhance its competitiveness.
"For the whole year of 2022, our production and exports will be affected to some extent, mainly due to the sudden large-scale COVID-19 surge in Shanghai and knock-on effects around the Yangtze River Delta region," Li said.
According to Li, Soton's products are mainly exported to Europe and Japan, and exports are at the same level as the same period last year.