Editor’s Note
**Editor’s Note:** This article highlights the collaborative strength of Guangdong’s jewelry industry, emphasizing how regional clusters—from Shenzhen’s supply chain to Guangzhou’s processing and Shanwei’s colored gemstone niche—create a resilient foundation for specialized growth.
Guangdong’s jewelry industry has never been a solo effort by a single city but has formed a cluster pattern with distinct characteristics and complementary advantages. This has laid a solid foundation for Shanwei’s colored gemstone sector to stand out and provided deep industrial confidence for this dedicated promotional event.
From Shenzhen’s comprehensive industry chain layout to Guangzhou’s international processing capabilities, and then to Shanwei’s niche advantage in colored gemstones, Guangdong’s jewelry industry leverages its cluster strength to build a high ground for the industry both nationally and globally.
Shenzhen, as the national center for jewelry manufacturing, trading, and design, saw its gold and jewelry industry’s above-scale industrial output value reach 331.551 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 34.4%, ranking first nationwide for 22 consecutive years. Its physical gold processing volume accounts for 70% of the physical delivery volume of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, and nearly 30,000 design patents account for 65% of the national total, making it the “dragon head engine” of Guangdong’s jewelry industry.
Guangzhou’s Panyu district, relying on its world-class processing techniques, occupies a 30% share of the global jewelry production and processing market. “Panyu craft” and “Panyu cutting” have become international quality benchmarks. A talent team of 10,000 designers and 40,000 craftsmen makes this an important base for global jewelry processing.
Under the radiation of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Shanwei’s Haifeng County has carved out a distinctive development path in the niche field of colored gemstones. After more than 40 years of transformation, Shanwei has grown from a few dozen small workshops into the “Capital of Jewelry in China” and the “Capital of Colored Gemstones in China.” In March 2025, its gold, silver, and jewelry industry belt was selected as a pilot for Guangdong Province’s “Cross-border E-commerce + Industry Belt” initiative, supporting the “Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Millions Project.”
Currently, Shanwei’s jewelry industry belt has over 21,000 market entities, employing approximately 92,000 people. It processes 50,000 tons of colored gemstones and 9,000 tons of gold and silver alloy jewelry annually, with an output value of nearly 35 billion yuan. Crystal products account for 70% of the global processing volume, making it an unignorable force in the global colored gemstone industry.
Among them, Ketang Town, as the world’s largest crystal jewelry processing base, has an output value of nearly 5 billion yuan. Meilong Town focuses on gold and silver jewelry processing, with an output value of nearly 30 billion yuan. The two towns work together to form a complementary industrial pattern of colored gemstones and gold and silver jewelry.
Shanwei’s industrial strength is also reflected in its market share. On major domestic e-commerce platforms, products shipped from Shanwei account for about 35% of the total quantity and about 30% of the total sales in the colored gemstone category, with a mid-range colored gemstone market share exceeding 50%. Internationally, its crystal jewelry holds about a 30% share in Southeast Asia and about 15% in European and American markets, with products exported to multiple regions worldwide, making it an important growth pole for Guangdong’s jewelry exports.
If the industry cluster has solidified the foundation for Guangdong’s jewelry development, then digital transformation and marketing model innovation are the core drivers for sustained growth. Shanwei is a typical example of Guangdong’s jewelry industry embracing the digital economy and exploring cross-border integration. This “Canton Goods Go Global” Shanwei special event is a concentrated review of its digital development achievements.
From the widespread adoption of live-streaming e-commerce to the deep layout of cross-border platforms, Shanwei has enabled the colored gemstone industry to ride the fast track of the digital economy, achieving a leap from “processing and manufacturing” to “brand going global.”
Guangdong Province has long embarked on the digital transformation of its jewelry industry. In Shenzhen, the adoption rate of technologies like 3D printing and CNC engraving has reached 40%. Zhaoqing’s Sihui has pioneered the “Internet + Auction + Live Streaming” model, with e-commerce live streaming sales accounting for over 60% of total sales. Foshan’s Pingzhou has over 3,000 new retail live-streaming entities. Digitalization has become a standard feature of Guangdong’s jewelry industry.
Shanwei, combining its own industrial characteristics, has taken digital empowerment to the extreme, making online sales its core marketing channel. The establishment of the Ketang Douyin Base and the Youth Entrepreneurship Park Taobao Base has made live-streaming e-commerce a crucial driver for industrial development.
Data shows that over half of the jewelry in Ketang Town is sold through live-streaming e-commerce. There are over 2,500 local enterprises engaged in e-commerce live streaming, employing over 15,000 people, with an average daily sales volume exceeding 5 million yuan. In 2025, Shanwei’s city-wide online retail sales of gold, silver, and jewelry (excluding cross-border e-commerce) reached 9.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 151.5%. The explosive power of the digital economy is vividly demonstrated in Shanwei’s colored gemstone industry.
In the cross-border e-commerce field, Shanwei connects with platforms like Alibaba International, Amazon, and AliExpress, becoming a base for Guangdong Province’s jewelry cross-border export supply chain. In 2025, its cross-border e-commerce transaction volume reached 3.11 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%, achieving a closed-loop integrated marketing of “online + offline + export.”
This “Canton Goods Go Global” Shanwei special event deeply integrates digital empowerment with offline display. The event not only gathers dozens of source factories from Ketang and Meilong, offering factory-direct pricing benefits, but also specially invites representatives from leading e-commerce platforms like Douyin, Alibaba, and Taobao, as well as jewelry live-streamers, to broadcast live on-site, creating a dual-channel model of “offline display + online sales,” allowing consumers to “cloud visit the exhibition” from home.
At the same time, the event introduces a “100 times compensation for counterfeits” quality commitment, with professional testing agencies providing on-site inspection services. This digital quality control system and experience model enhance consumer purchasing trust, representing an extension of Shanwei’s jewelry industry model innovation.
Shanwei’s colored gemstones, riding the momentum of “Canton Goods Go Global” to step into the spotlight, represent not only a new opportunity for its own industrial development but also an important measure for Guangdong’s arts and crafts industry to accelerate brand building and promote “Canton Goods Going Global.”
From a provincial industrial planning perspective, this special event is a practical implementation of Guangdong’s push to develop its arts and crafts industry towards high-end, branded, and internationalized directions. Guangdong is leveraging industry cluster upgrades, brand building, and global channel construction to make Lingnan arts and crafts a shining name card for Chinese culture going global.