The day after the euro was launched in 2002, the Europeans found their old wallets were not big enough to hold their new banknotes. The new euro notes are larger than most of the currencies used within the Union at that time. However, it was not a long time before they found new wallets. Various types of newly made, euro-friendly wallets soon flooded into countries in the Euro Zone, with good quality and low prices.
 
When the Europeans began to fill their new wallets with the banknotes, they probably had no idea that all these just-in-time wallets came from a place called Wenzhou, a small city in Southeastern China.
 
With a population of 7 million, Wenzhou is by no means a metropolitan city like Beijing and Shanghai. Yet the people there have earned great fame for being enterprising folk - not only in China but also in the United States and Europe.
 
Months before the launch of the new euro, Wenzhou merchants managed to get a model of the new banknotes. They immediately realized there would be a huge opportunity as they found the new notes were bigger than the current ones. So they decided to make wallets with larger sizes that were able to contain the new notes after the euro’s launch. When the wallets came out, all of them made a large fortune in this way.

With their reputation for shrewd enterprise, Wenzhou’s native people have been called the “Chinese Jews”, and just as their counterparts found, not everyone was happy about their business talent. Just miles away from their hometown, people living in Shanghai have been complaining about the house price staying high due to investment from Wenzhou. This kind of dissatisfaction eventually turned to tragedy in Elche, Spain, where Wenzhou business people suffered a catastrophic attack from local extremists.

"It was all for 3 Euros!" explained one of the victims, a Chinese shoe dealer from Wenzhou, “A nice pair of shoes shipped from China cost 5 euro, 3 euro cheaper than the cheapest pair made by local factories.” With this 3 euro price difference, Chinese shoe dealers had gained huge advantage in competing with local manufacturers, which irritated them immensely. Lots of small factories there had been forced into bankruptcy in recent years and the unemployment rate in the industry increased by 30% over the last 30 years.

So on the night of September 16th, thousands of local factory workers burst into China town, burning the newly arrived Chinese shoes. Altogether 16 containers were burnt down, with the total loss of 1 million euro. Rumors were flying that the rioters were making petrol bombs, leaving 500 thousand Chinese merchants under unprecedented risk.

The whole city was shocked.

Finally, the Chinese embassy to Spain intervened. Several arrests were made by the local police. Some of the rioters told the press that the matter was not just about the cut-price products. A significant proportion of Chinese shoes in Spain are untaxed and sold on black markets, making it impossible, they say, for legal businesses to compete.

We do not know whether those who started the fire were telling the truth or just finding excuses for their criminal behavior. But we do know that in civilized society, people solve problems through legal processes. If justice shall be carried out in such a violent way, soon people will find it hard to tell right from wrong.

Reference:
Spanish fury over Chinese shoes, Katya Adler, BBC Madrid
http://news.163.com/40924/7/111DFUSB0001124S.html

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