The Chinese city that makes the world's flags knew Trump would win
As the world held their breath for the past 24 hours awaiting the results of the U.S. elections, one small Chinese city already knew Donald Trump would win.
Yiwu, a hub of wholesale manufacturing in China, handles a huge portion of the world's flag orders.
In an interview with Digger, a Chinese video site, Yao Dan Dan, who runs a small factory making flags for export to U.S. retailers, said there were far more Trump flags ordered compared with those for Hillary Clinton.
After a couple of early orders for Clinton flags, some of Yao's American customers stopped commissioning those altogether, as fewer people were buying them, he said.
He's convinced that this shows that Trump had a larger base of support on the ground in the U.S.
Leading up to Election Day, Yao's factory in Keqiao received new orders each day, and made over 200,000 flags.
"Trump has a high approval rate," he says, adding that the volume of orders gave him the confidence to manufacture the Trump flags without insisting on a deposit from customers.
Other flag makers have also appeared to corroborate those sentiments:
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On Chinese wholesale sites like Aliexpress, where manufacturers list their goods for Western buyers, flags go for roughly US$2.50 to US$8 a piece, depending on size.
A quick search for either candidate's flags show a larger variety available for Trump.
And while there were few anti-Trump designs, searching for Clinton's flags showed several anti-Hillary designs prominently on the first page of results.
Here are some of the more popular pro-Trump designs that American flag retailers ordered on Aliexpress.
Some pro-Hillary designs:
Anti-Hillary flags easily found on Aliexpress:
BONUS: Donald Trump's victory speech
Topics Donald Trump Elections
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
