The Wenzhou Model for Economic Development: Impressions

Abstract

Wenzhou is an isolated and parochial city on the south-east coast of Zhejiang Province, East China. In 1988, its population totalled 552,100. Wenzhou Municipality, composed of two city districts (Longwan and Lucheng), one county-level city (Rui'an) and eight counties, had in that same year a population of 6.5 million, equal to about one-seventh of Zhejiang's 42 million people. The topography of Wenzhou Municipality is mountainous, the cultivable land rich and the area is endowed with a temperate climate.Historically, Wenzhou looked to the sea for its economic links and trade, and cultural contacts. Its overland links with Zhejiang and neighboring provinces were tenuous, given the difficulty of the terrain. Wenzhou's geographic location proved a liability after 1949 with the presence of the hostile Nationalist government on Taiwan, adjacent to southern Zhejiang. The city became strategically vulnerable and its pattern of development was perforce adapted accordingly. In fact, Wenzhou fell into a thirty-year period of stagnation, neglect and almost total oblivion from which it only aroused itself in the mid-1980s.In the heady days of 1986/87, when the theory of the primary stage of socialism permitted and excused all kinds of adventurous policies in the name of economic development, the Wenzhou model (moshi) for economic reform received great publicity throughout the country. It also came to the notice of foreign observers. In fact, the people of Wenzhou seem to have quietly, and determinedly, set about reviving the local economy, and raising their own very low standards of living, well before outside officials and the media became aware of, or were prepared to acknowledge the existence of its individual approach to marketing and production.

Business associations in China: Two regional experiences

“…By contrast, the Wenzhou pattern incorporates a prominent role for private business and entrepreneur-initiated development (see Nolan and Dong, 1990;Forster, 1990;Parris, 1993;Whiting, 2001;Yuan, 1987;Zhang and Li, 1990;Shi et al, 2002). Compared with Wuxi, this was a remote and poor region.…”

“…I use ''statist'' versus ''societal'' instead of ''corporatist'' versus ''civil society,'' because some scholars doubt the appropriateness of using the latter framework in the Chinese context (seeForster, 1990). 2 Sunan, literally southern Jiangsu province, includes Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou.…”

New Wenzhou: Migration, metropolitan spatial development and modernity in a third-tier Chinese model city

“…The process of migration and settlement has been one of the defining features of urban (Wenzhou moshi) is a system of production that is centered on family enterprises and embedded in thick local institutions (Forster, 1990;A. P. L. Liu, 1992;Kristen Parris, 1993;Wei, 2007 These products were mostly traded to neighboring countries by sea, such as Japan, Korea and Cambodia.…”

“…3.4). As the old saying in China goes-"Building the road is the first step to becoming rich," without railways and expressways to connect it to the outside world, Wenzhou was one of the most economically-backward cities in eastern China (Forster, 1990). The urban structure of Wenzhou city remained a single center with gradual expansion in three directions from the old city center to the west, south and east.…”

“…Since 1985, China has used Wenzhou as a model for the development of private enterprise. The essence of the "Wenzhou model" is a system of production that is centered on family enterprises and embedded in thick local institutions (Forster, 1990;A. P. L. Liu, 1992;Kristen Parris, 1993;Wei, 2007).…”