High-Quality Development Story Collection | Loans from Hometown

Speaker: Wu Weiling, Deputy Head of the Lishui Branch of the People’s Bank of China

Doing business outside your hometown, the biggest fear is “cutting off cash flow.”

Lishui native merchant Tao Xiaojun once faced such a dilemma. In 2024, he needed to renovate and expand his supermarket in Ningbo, and “money” became a major issue. At this moment, a 500,000 yuan loan from his hometown solved his urgent problem.

Lishui in Zhejiang is known as “Nine mountains, half water, half farmland.” The natural conditions of many mountains and limited land have driven generations of Lishui people to leave the mountains and start businesses elsewhere. Today, it has become the “Hometown of Supermarket Entrepreneurship in China,” with over 60,000 supermarkets opened by Lishui natives across the country.

Micro and small businesses are the “capillaries” of the market economy. However, scattered across the country, “Lishui supermarkets” generally face financing difficulties: high liquidity of goods, most operating sites are leased, and there is a lack of effective collateral; plus high transportation costs and information asymmetry about financing needs, making it hard for banks to lend.

How to break this deadlock? We use data empowerment to find solutions. Based on data support provided by the Lishui Municipal Data Bureau, we integrated and applied multiple sources of data related to public administration, merchant operations, and bank credit to create the “Liji Tong” platform, which can accurately “profile” Lishui merchants operating across the country with different conditions.

This is not just a simple channel for obtaining loan information but a data-driven financial service ecosystem. Under the premise of ensuring data security, financial information is co-constructed and shared, breaking down regional and temporal restrictions. Banks can see clearly and dare to lend; merchants can get loans quickly and use them effectively, truly achieving inclusive finance with “precise drip irrigation.” As of January 15, 2026, the “Liji Tong” platform has served over 32,900 small and micro entities outside Lishui, with a total credit amount of 7.953 billion yuan.

Beyond loans, we also launched policies such as entrepreneurship insurance and interest subsidies. With this hometown support, Lishui people are more confident in their outside ventures! (Compiled by Wang Zhen, People’s Daily Online)