Worldwide Wenzhou Entrepreneurs: The Wealth Creation Legend of Seven Million Wenzhou Businessmen

Author: Long Xinming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: It is universally acknowledged that Wenzhou people can make money. The Jews are revered as the "Great Merchants," while Wenzhou people are globally recognized as the "Oriental Jews." Just a dozen years after Wenzhou people made their mark on the European continent, they utterly defeated the real Jews, leaving them in disarray, and their business genius stunned the world: Is there any group of people who are better at business than the Jews? Not everyone is suited for business, but why are Wenzhou people so adept at it? What is the secret formula behind their success?
Influential Wenzhou Entrepreneurs Three hundred years ago, Wenzhou was just a small county by the East Sea, where the residents were either farmers or fishermen. Legend has it that some Wenzhou people resorted to piracy out of poverty back then. Over 20 years ago, two-thirds of Wenzhou's population lived below the poverty line, with an average annual income of less than 200 yuan per person and only 0.41 acres of arable land per capita. Due to Wenzhou's geographical location and national strategy, the country invested only more than 600 million yuan in Wenzhou over 30 years, which was only one-seventh of the average investment in comparable cities.
The folk songs of the time, such as "People in Pingyang beg, Wen'an people trade, Dongtou rely on loans to survive," were full of the helplessness of Wenzhou's abject poverty. In 1957, the industrial and agricultural output value of Wenzhou was only 760 million yuan. From 1957 to 1976, the average annual growth rate of Wenzhou's industrial and agricultural output value was only 1.98%. This was the miserable reality of Wenzhou for nearly two decades. So, with no other choice, the impoverished Wenzhou people were forced to seek livelihoods outside their hometown. At that time in China, walking down any alley in a city, one could hear the sound of pounding cotton, and often see Wenzhou cobbler hammering shoes with a clatter. In various hairdressing salons, the voices of Mandarin with a hint of Western Zhejiang dialect could be heard, and even in the remote Altai Mountains of Xinjiang, Wenzhou people followed herders around just to repair and polish their shoes. At that time, some wise people were amazed: The terrifying Wenzhou people!
Indeed, over 20 years later, Wenzhou has proudly become one of the wealthiest small cities in all of China. How did Wenzhou transform from a resource-scarce, geographically isolated speck of land into a haven of people-centered economy? There is a story that made Wenzhou people proud: In 1998, a famous Japanese lighter company, which was renowned worldwide, could not believe that Wenzhou people had made a fortune in the lighter business, forcing Japanese and Korean manufacturers to the brink of bankruptcy. Therefore, they sent an economic and trade delegation to visit Wenzhou, aiming to solve a mystery: How could the retail price of Wenzhou lighters be only one-tenth of that of Japanese lighters?
At the renowned Dayu Lighter Factory in Wenzhou, the introduction by the owner Zhou Dahu almost made the Japanese delegation faint: For the same electronic lighter component, a Japanese company produced one at a cost of 1 yuan, while Zhou Dahu's purchase price was only 0.1 yuan, and the production cost of the family-owned enterprises that supplied components to Dayu Factory was as low as 0.01 yuan. When the Japanese delegation left, they were ashen-faced, and upon returning home, they had no choice but to close down their lighter factories.
Wenzhou people, with no capital, no technology, and no backing,