Editor’s Note
The diamond industry continues to face significant headwinds, with the world’s largest producer, De Beers, announcing further price cuts. This reflects a prolonged market crisis driven by shifting consumer demand and the rise of lab-grown alternatives.
Since peaking in 2022, the diamond industry is facing one of its most severe and prolonged crises in modern history, driven by cooling luxury consumption in major consumer countries and the growing popularity of lab-grown diamonds. The situation has been exacerbated by US tariffs on India, the world’s largest diamond exporter.
Now, over a year later, De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, has once again announced a reduction in diamond prices.
On January 20, according to Yicai reports, at its first routine diamond auction of the year starting this week, De Beers significantly lowered the prices of rough diamonds over 0.75 carats. The exact magnitude of the adjustment is not yet known.
Informed sources revealed that De Beers adopted a consolidated invoicing policy for this auction—instead of pricing each box of diamonds individually, a total invoice was issued for combined lots, making the precise price reduction difficult to calculate.
Industry insiders estimate the price reduction range to be around 10%-15%.
De Beers’ price cut stems from falling prices due to declining global diamond demand. According to the RapNet Diamond Price Index (RAPI), in 2025, the RAPI for diamonds over 3 carats fell slightly by 0.4%. Smaller, everyday consumer-grade diamonds (0.3-0.5 carats), impacted by lab-grown diamonds and weak demand, saw significant price drops, with 0.5-carat diamonds falling over 20% for the full year of 2025.
De Beers holds significant sway in the rough diamond market. The company holds 10 diamond auctions annually, where participating “sightholders” typically have to passively accept the prices and quantities offered.
However, in the current tense market environment, many diamond dealers are no longer willing to pay the prices set by De Beers.
It is noteworthy that the diamond industry, one of the global symbols of luxury, has been wavering in recent years. Weak end-demand persists; in 2025, US imports of polished diamonds fell 48% year-on-year. Insufficient market confidence and high gold prices have driven consumers towards lighter gold jewelry, further pressuring diamond demand.
De Beers has accumulated over $2 billion in inventory, and since last year, the sales rate at its diamond auctions has also been declining.
Industry analysts point out that as a leading upstream company, De Beers’ price reduction aims to boost sales performance on one hand, and on the other, to provide greater profit margins for midstream processors to stimulate market demand.
In fact, the trend of significant declines in both diamond sales and prices has persisted for several years.
As early as September 2023, CCTV Finance reported that in the preceding year, prices for certified diamonds had fallen 35% to 40%. Diamonds from 0.5 to 3 carats were hit the hardest, with sales also dropping 30% to 35% during the same period.
At that time, De Beers cut prices for its mainstream products, natural diamonds from 2 to 4 carats, by 40%. Subsequently, in January 2024, De Beers lowered rough diamond prices by about 10%, and in December of that year, it reduced prices for rough diamonds sold on the secondary market by 10% to 15%.
According to Cover News, a decade ago, Ms. Li from Chengdu spent 100,000 yuan on a one-carat diamond ring. Today, after consulting multiple recyclers, the highest valuation she received was only 30,000 yuan. The brilliance of the ring in her hand has been overshadowed by the chill of depreciation.
This is not an isolated case. In Xichang, Sichuan, a 34-year-old woman found that the two wedding rings she bought for 14,000 yuan ten years ago now sell for less than 200 yuan combined, lamenting, “I should have bought gold instead.”
In contrast, in January 2016, a decade ago, Lao Fengxiang’s gold price was about 290 yuan per gram. By January 20, 2026, Lao Fengxiang’s gold price had reached 1,456 yuan per gram, an increase of over 400%.
Furthermore, increasingly affordable lab-grown diamonds are severely squeezing the living space of natural diamonds.
According to CCTV Finance, in 2025, lab-grown diamonds accounted for over 40% of the global diamond jewelry market, an increase of more than 8 times compared to 2019.
Meanwhile, in recent years, the retail price of lab-grown diamonds has fallen over 50% from its peak. Today, the price of a 1-carat lab-grown diamond has dropped from 8,000 yuan to 3,500 yuan, less than one-tenth the price of a natural diamond of equivalent quality.
Currently, China’s synthetic diamond industry leads the world in scale, with increasingly diverse downstream products.
The “2024 China Jewelry Industry Development Report” mentions that, according to incomplete statistics, China’s lab-grown diamond production in 2024 was approximately 22 million carats, a year-on-year increase of 144.44%, accounting for 63% of global total production.
At a store specializing in lab-grown diamonds in Nanyang, Henan, reporters saw a continuous stream of consumers coming for inquiries and purchases, mainly young people. The store manager stated that young people account for about 70%, and sales in 2025 doubled compared to the previous year.
Staff indicated that the clarity, color, and other indicators of these lab-grown diamonds are fully comparable to natural diamonds and difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, but the price is only one-fifth or even lower than that of natural diamonds.