The municipal taxation bureau of Yiwu donates 80,000 face masks to Iran. [Photo/zgyww.cn]

Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang province is contributing to the global struggle against the novel coronavirus and becoming a global anti-epidemic supply center, local media reported on April 12.

Iranian businessman Hamid's home country has been among the most heavily affected. Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs urgently sent out a procurement list to Iranian businessmen in China, asking for assistance.

The municipal taxation bureau launched a charity donation held discussions with the Xuri Public Welfare Club in Yiwu (Home of World Businessmen).

The bureau quickly got in contact with local enterprises in Yiwu which were qualified to produce disposable medical masks.

In just three days, the city produced 80,000 disposable medical masks and donated them to Iran free of charge through Hamid.

"True friendship shines even in the most difficult of times," Hamid said. The municipal tax bureau also offered tax relief for foreign businessmen like Hamid and helped them resume operations with multilingual online courses, free of charge. 

Data from the Yiwu foreign affairs office show that about 60 percent of the 15,000 resident foreign businessmen are Arab.

In the past 10 days, more than 1,000 Arabic translators have returned to Yiwu from as far as more than 2,000 km away with help from the city government.

The Yiwu municipal government has spent more than 1 billion yuan ($140 million) handling the epidemic-related challenges local enterprises face during this hard period.

"Although the epidemic has caused some troubles, the government's supporting policies give us a lot of confidence," said Wang Wenjun, chairman of the board of Sumsoar Group. "In the past two months, my company has received about 2 million yuan in tax reductions."