ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Wenzhou, the once poor city in southeastern Zhejiang province, spearheaded the development of the private economy.1 The “Wenzhou model” of family-owned enterprises was widely contrasted with the “Sunan model” (based in southern Jiangsu) of collective enterprises and the “Guangzhou model” of export processing. Given the illegitimacy of the private economy for much of this period, Wenzhou’s development was controversial and given little support at the national level. But Wenzhou was a highly populated area with little arable land and that dictated that they find their own path to prosperity.
