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Entrepreneurship and poverty reduction: A case study of Yiwu, China

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Abstract

There has been a significant reduction in the number of desperately poor people in the world in recent years. A great deal of that reduction in poverty can be attributed in China. There is great potential for new insights for scholars, in looking more deeply into the Chinese experience in terms of entrepreneurship and poverty reduction. This paper employs an in-depth case study of how poverty was reduced through entrepreneurship and innovation in the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu. This study is a response to some scholars’ call for more direct examination of businesses’ involvement with the poor to shed new light on the emerging topic of the roles of business in poverty reduction. Moreover, this study reports on key factors, new insights, and experiences which have led to success in poverty reduction and contributes to theory and practice in this area.

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Notes

  1. They carried candy made out of sugarcane, one of the few cash crops that could be profitably planted in Yiwu, and exchanged it for chicken feathers and other commodities.

  2. Such business activities included: (1) commerce in the city; (2) long-distance logistics; (3) competition with public-owned enterprises; and (4) opening a commodity market. It says that, if the commodity market is not officially approved, “business order will become even more chaotic” and “market management fees and state taxes will not be able to be collected” (Forster 2000: 39). This statement was made two years before the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee’s decision on the reform of the economic system.

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Acknowledgment

Our thanks to Marc Ahlstrom of Burlington County College for his editorial assistance.

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Correspondence to Aiqi Wu.

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Paper for the Special Issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management—Asia & Poverty: Closing the Great Divide through Entrepreneurship & Innovation

This research paper was partially supported by Chinese NSF, grant no. 71102069; Thanks to Professor Xiaobo Wu, Professor Renhua Liu, and Professor Jay Barney for their valuable suggestions and insights for this Zhejiang-based entrepreurship research paper.

Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 3
figure 3

Evolution of Yiwu’s industry structure (output value proportion), 1978–2006

Fig. 4
figure 4

Change in GDP per capita in Yiwu, 1978–2008 (RMB Yuan)

Fig. 5
figure 5

Change in income condition of Yiwu district, 1978–2008 (RMB Yuan)

Table 3 Number of getihu and private firms in Yiwu, 2004–2012

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Si, S., Yu, X., Wu, A. et al. Entrepreneurship and poverty reduction: A case study of Yiwu, China. Asia Pac J Manag 32, 119–143 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-014-9395-7

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