Wantou is a small village in the flat farmland of Shandong province about 350km south of Beijing. It has little to set it apart from hundreds of thousands of similar Chinese villages but for one thing – a long tradition of wicker and straw handicrafts that are becoming hugely popular among online shoppers.
The An family, the first to start selling their handmade homewares, have been profiled by several Chinese news outlets after becoming wealthy from their trade and encouraging friends and neighbours to follow suit. This has turned Wantou into one of retailer Alibaba’s “Taobao Villages”, where groups of people form a mini-industry by selling similar products online. Their activity can boost the local economy by giving rise to demand for other goods and services.
This is the private parallel economy that is one of the big reasons to be optimistic about China’s development. Business happens not only without the help of the state-owned banking and industrial complex, but even in spite of it.