From traveling across mountains and rivers to catch the market to taking orders and providing services on the cloud, business in Linxia, Gansu Province is getting more and more popular

China News Service, Lanzhou, November 11 (Zhao Yun, Ma Jinzhong) A press conference for the 70th anniversary of the founding of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu Province was held in Lanzhou on the 11th. Local officials mentioned learning from the spirit of Yiwu.

Everyone knows that Yiwu, Zhejiang, started out by "exchanging chicken feathers for sugar" and turned small commodities into a global business. However, few people have paid attention to Linxia, ​​Gansu Province in the inland northwest. This "Western Dry Terminal" that does not rely on the sea or borders, has also carved out a unique path with the same business genes.

Local commerce has evolved from sporadic markets on the Ancient Tea Horse Road to a modern hub that radiates to the northwest and connects the whole country. The business network extends outwards and the business formats are upgraded inward. The story of the "Millennium Dry Wharf" is continued in the inheritance and reshaping.

Team up to enter the market and create an industrial map

Linxia was known as Hezhou in ancient times and had a tea and horse department in the Ming Dynasty. It has been the core node of commercial exchanges between the Central Plains and Tibet-related areas since ancient times. In 1956, when the autonomous prefecture was first established, faced with the dilemma of declining commerce and people having to travel dozens of miles to go to the market, the local government began to restore traditional folk markets and gradually restored urban and rural markets. Beida Street Market and Nanguan Inn reappeared in the market fireworks.

In 1984, Linxia allocated the former government compound and raised 2.8 million yuan of private funds to build the Linxia Ethnic Shopping Mall, which became the earliest private joint-stock commercial project in the country. The shopping mall gathers hundreds of merchants and thousands of products, and merchants from Qinghai, Ningxia, and Tibet-related areas come here in droves; the Civil Trade Mall and the Chunguang Shopping Mall have been completed one after another, forming a wholesale distribution center radiating to the northwest around the central square. Sociologist Fei Xiaotong's assessment that "there is Wenzhou in the east and Hezhou in the west" fixed the boom of private commerce at that time.

The profound business tradition has also given birth to the children of Linxia who venture abroad. In 1985, Linxia established Gansu's first Tibet office in Lhasa, building a service bridge for entrepreneurs going to Tibet. Today, 180,000 Linxia entrepreneurs are starting businesses and finding jobs in Tibet, with their businesses covering more than 10 fields including Chinese medicinal materials, supermarkets, logistics, and construction.

Lu Hongzhou, chairman of Baiyi Group, traveled between the two places with a transportation team from his hometown when he was young. Starting from a 30-square-meter counter, he opened more than a hundred supermarkets in Tibet; Ma Yisifu went to Tibet to work hard at the age of 14, printed his mobile phone number on product packaging and promised after-sales, and established a foothold on the plateau with integrity.

"Work together to conquer the world" is the survival wisdom passed down from generation to generation by "Linshang", and it is also the key to their large-scale industrial agglomeration. Tie Xiaolin, president of the Linxia Chamber of Commerce in Nagqu City, Tibet, took the lead in gathering 350 members, actively diluting the shares of his company, launching an incentive mechanism that provides free shares after years of service, and also launched free Tibetan language training classes to help fellow villagers integrate into local life. The "Red Pomegranate" ethnic unity compound he invested in allows 245 residents of five ethnic groups to live, study, and have fun together.

Riding on the numbers, Dongfeng Zhimi Logistics Network opens up sales across the country

Over the past 70 years, Linxia's positioning as the "Western Dry Terminal" has not changed, but the core of commerce has continued to iterate. The development practice of Yiwu is regarded as a living teaching material by the local people. It does not copy the market construction model, but based on the local resource endowment, it promotes the transformation of commerce from simple cargo transfer to a complex hub with industrial linkage and digital empowerment.

It is reported that Linxia entrepreneurs have opened 37,600 catering stores at home and abroad, employing about 210,000 people, and have abundant private business resources. Linxia Comprehensive Logistics Park has been built locally to form an efficient and smooth three-level logistics system for counties and villages. The characteristic cold chain system for cattle and sheep continues to improve. Linxia has also seized the opportunity of the construction of the Lanzhou-Hebei Railway to build a four-way three-dimensional logistics channel. The trade routes used by mules and horses in the past are becoming efficient circulation corridors on wheels.

The digital wave has opened up a new track for Linxia. The local area relies on the "Guanghe Model" to cultivate live broadcast e-commerce, and specialties such as beef, mutton, and pepper are sold nationwide. In Jishishan County, the "AI Bean Plan" digital economic industrial park is put into operation. As the first digital Mulan employment center in Gansu Province and the seventh in the country, it undertakes four core digital businesses: Ele.me's national rider health certificate and identity authenticity review, Ant Group's intelligent data secondary identification, Alibaba ADS fusion annotation, and Ant Cloud customer service. Everything from consumer safety verification to 3D point cloud data support for driverless technology can be processed in this mountainous county.

The local government has also made efforts from the six dimensions of market upgrading, industry and trade linkage, entity cultivation, digital e-commerce, logistics channels, and financial services to promote the construction of the Hezhou Food Central Kitchen Industrial Park, implement gradient cultivation of commercial and trade enterprises, and innovate supply chain finance to solve the financing problems of small and medium-sized merchants.

In addition, using nostalgia as a link, Linxia has simultaneously attracted talented people from other places to return to their hometowns to start businesses. Since 2024, investment projects signed with Tibet have exceeded 4.2 billion yuan. Lu Hongzhou returned to his hometown to build the Baiyi Sino-Dutch International Flower Port, allowing Linxia flowers to be sold at home and abroad.