Visitors enjoy food and entertainment activities during the Starlight Music Festival in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, on July 13. [Photo/China Daily]

Approximately 1,600 kilometers from Yiwu in Manila, the Philippines, stands a sprawling overseas warehouse spanning around 10,000 square meters.

Inside, Yiwu-based businesses stock tens of thousands of products, including kitchenware from Yiwu's own Creative Kitchenware founder, Liu Pingjuan.

"This allows many wholesale and retail customers to complete product sampling, selection, and ordering right at their doorstep, reducing costs significantly. It also enables direct supply to Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce giants like Shopee and Lazada," Liu said.

According to seasoned foreign trade experts, an overseas warehouse is a facility established abroad for storing goods, processing orders, and logistics and distribution.

Foreign trade platforms and cross-border e-commerce platforms handle orders, then entrust the warehouse to take care of sorting and delivery to end consumers. The advantages of this new model include reducing product logistics time, lowering shipping costs, enhancing after-sales services, reducing return rates, and optimizing inventory management.

To date, Yiwu has set up 210 such overseas warehouses in 50 different countries.

Ozcan Sezer, from Turkiye, also placed his bet on the promising future of the Chinese economy. He came to China to start a business 14 years ago, and today, he owns a six-story commercial building, and his Turkish restaurant in Yiwu has tripled in size compared to just two years ago.

"Investing and doing business in China was the best decision I ever made," said the ambitious man who aims to open 1,000 restaurants and stores in China.