Editor’s Note
This article explores how Zhuji, a county-level city in Zhejiang, has cultivated two dominant industrial clusters—pearls and hosiery—that command significant global market shares. It highlights the local factors behind this remarkable economic specialization.
The ‘Pearl Town’ handles over 80% of China’s and 70% of the world’s pearl trade volume; the ‘Sock Art Town’ produces over 25 billion pairs of socks annually… Zhuji, a county-level city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, has become a dual champion in the pearl and hosiery industries.
Entering Shanxiahu Town, the main pearl-producing area of Zhuji, one sees lakes and ponds scattered across the landscape. This unique geographical environment laid the foundation for developing the pearl farming industry.
It is reported that Zhuji City, known as the ‘Pearl Capital of China,’ hosts the world’s largest pearl trading market. The annual output value of its complete pearl industry chain exceeds 50 billion yuan, covering farming, processing, sales, and derivative products.
Currently, Zhuji’s Datang sock industry is the world’s largest hosiery industry cluster, with an industrial scale exceeding 70 billion yuan. Tens of thousands of sock enterprises have formed a complete industrial chain ecosystem, from product design and technological innovation to sock machine manufacturing and sock production.
Anchored on building a ‘trillion-yuan fashion industry,’ Zhuji is continuously promoting industrial upgrading, focusing on breaking through development bottlenecks to enhance the market influence and competitiveness of the ‘Pearl Capital’ and ‘International Sock Capital’ both domestically and internationally.
Policies and resources are being concentrated on projects. At the beginning of the new year, Zhucheng City in Weifang, Shandong province, is accelerating project construction at full speed to gain a head start and build momentum for the ’15th Five-Year Plan’ period.
Shandong Zhuoyi CNC Equipment Co., Ltd. specializes in manufacturing CNC machine tools. In recent years, the trend towards larger-scale and higher-precision equipment has made upgrading production facilities imperative.
In areas such as engineering planning, construction permits, and municipal facility approvals, Zhucheng City has integrated and optimized processes, improving approval efficiency by nearly 70%. Benefiting from this, Zhuoyi’s second-phase project was launched swiftly.
The ‘Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area Future Industry Cultivation and Development Action Plan (2025-2027)’ was recently released and implemented. Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) will focus on two main lines: ‘Future-oriented Transformation of Advantageous Industries’ and ‘Industrialization of Future Technologies.’ Aligning with national strategic directions and regional endowments, it will systematically build a ‘4+2+X’ future industry development system.
To better empower industrial development and create a first-class innovation ecosystem, TEDA’s ‘Firefly Alliance’ has also been officially launched. This alliance is an open innovation cooperation organization jointly established by universities, research institutes, enterprises, financial institutions, and service agencies. It aims to systematically address bottlenecks in the transformation of scientific and technological achievements and build a full-chain innovation ecosystem.
In recent years, Zibo City in Shandong province has leveraged its local characteristic agricultural resources. By extending, supplementing, and strengthening industrial chains, it has promoted the transition of agricultural products from primary sales to deep processing, developing small local specialties into large, prosperity-boosting industries. This effectively increases added value and broadens channels for increasing residents’ income.
In Dongli Town, Yiyuan County, Zibo City, the planting area for yellow peaches reaches 20,000 mu. Previously, a large quantity of second-grade peaches were difficult to sell at low prices. In response, the local government actively promoted the extension of the yellow peach industry chain and the enhancement of its value chain. The growth of the yellow peach industry has driven a ‘sweet economy’ benefiting villagers, with the total output value of the entire industry chain reaching 914 million yuan. By introducing deep processing projects such as fruit wine and dried peaches, the proportion of processing output value has reached 68%.