Wenzhou:

Special local products: Shoes, glasses, clothing, notebooks, shopping bags and others

Wenzhou exports food, tea, wine, jute, timber, paper, sunglass, eye glasses,  Alunite (a non-metallic mineral used to make alum and fertilizer). Alunite is quite abundant here and sometimes Wenzhou claims to be the "Alunite Capital of the World". Its 10 main industries each exceeding 1.5 billion dollars are electrical machinery, leather products, general equipment, power supply, plastic manufacturing, textile and garment, transport equipment, chemical products, metal products and metal processing.

 
From the 1990s, low-voltage electric appliances manufacturing became one of the major industries in Wenzhou, with some of the large private enterprises setting up joint ventures with GE and Schneider.
 
IN 1994, exploration for oil and natural gas commenced in the East China Sea 100 km off the coast of Wenzhou. Companies such as Texaco, Chevron, Shell and JAPEX have started to drill for oil but the operations have been largely unsuccessful.
 
Wenzhou is a city full of vibrant business activities. When China began economic reforms in 1978, Wenzhou was the first city to set up individual and private enterprises as well as a shareholding cooperative economy in China. It has also taken the lead in carrying out financial system reform and structural reform in townships. Being a pioneer in utilising marketing mechanism to develop urban constructions, Wenzhou has won a number of firsts in China and set many national records.
 
From 1978 through 2009, the GDP of the city has increased from 1.32 billion RMB to 252.8 billion RMB with the gross fiscal revenue increasing from 0.135 billion RMB to 36.1 billion RMB, and the net per capita income for rural residents increasing from 113.5 RMB to 10,100 RMB. The per capita disposable income for urban residents increased from 422.6 RMB in 1981 to 28,021 RMB in 2009, which is the third highest among Chinese cities, after Dongguan and Shenzhen.
 
GDP of the city in 2011 reached 335.087 billion RMB, a YOY growth of 9.5%。 Per capita GDP reached 42,278 RMB, or USD 6,546 as per yearly average exchange rate, a 8.2% increase over the previous year.
 
Financial Reform Pilot Project
 
In late March 2012 China's State Council announced that Wenzhou would be the site of a pilot project for the reform of private investment rules. The city had been a significant source of illegal loans, and this project would legalize and provide a regulatory framework for such activities. It has been seen not only as an attempt to legitimize Wenzhou's private finance market, but as a model for cleaning up underground lending in China as a whole.
Birthplace of China's private economy
 
In the early days of economic reforms, the people of Wenzhou took the lead in developing a commodity economy, household industries and specialized markets. Many thousands of people and families were engaged in household manufacturing to develop individual and private economy. Up till now, Wenzhou has a total of 240,000 individually-owned commercial and industrial units and 130,000 private enterprises of which 180 are group companies, 4 among China’s top 500 enterprises and 36 among national 500 top private enterprises. The quantity, industrial output, tax, export and number of employees of the private enterprises account for 99%, 96%, 75%, 95% and 80% of the whole city respectively. There are 27 national production bases such as "China’s Shoes Capital" and "China’s Capital of Electrical Equipment", China’s 40 famous trademarks and China’s famous-brand products and 67 national inspection-exempt products in the city. The development of private economy in Wenzhou has created the "Wenzhou Economic Model", which inspires the modernization drive in China.
 
The city of Wenzhou is a world leader in lighter manufacturing with over 500 such companies in the city. The plastic weaving cluster in Wenzhou comprised 1600 enterprises in 2001, employing 42,000 people with an annual output value of 20 billion Yuan. The Local cluster comprised 400 manufacturers in 2001 with a total output of 5 billion Yuan, representing 65 percent of the domestic market share. The cluster is the first in China in terms of market share and sold it products to 60 countries.
 
There are many areas in which people of Wenzhou opened the first example of private economy in post-1949 China. For instance, Junyao Airlines is built on July, 1991, which is the first and still the only private airline company in China. Jinwen Rail Way is also the first rail way company which is built with private capital.
 
Industrial zones

 Wenzhou Economic & Technological Development Zone
 
Wenzhou Economic & Technological Development Zone was established and approved by State Council in 1992. The main traffic system around the zone include No.104 National Highway, Ningbo-Wenzhou Expressway and Wenzhou Bridge. It is located near to Wenzhou International Airport and Wenzhou Port. Industries encouraged in the zone include electrical equipment, electronic information, chemical medicine, building materials, and textiles.