Wenzhou is a mid-size coastal city in China's eastern province Zhejiang. The name Wenzhou became viral in Wall Street and international business circles in April 2012 after the Chinese government announced plans to turn the city into an experimental ground for financial reforms that could remake the world's second largest economy. For the first time, Beijing made it significantly easier for foreigners to invest in Wenzhou and for Wenzhou citizens to lend, borrow and invest abroad. The plan would carve out much of the ""state" from China's state controlled capitalism and transform major parts of the global trade in the process.

Although Wenzhou only accounts for a small portion of China's economy, the reform's impact could be monumental if it's to follow the historical pattern of the special economic zones that were initially set up in coastal cities but quickly spread to the rest of China. It fundamentally transformed the Chinese economy from only couple percentages of global trade to the second largest economy in the world within two decades.