China News Service, Zhengzhou, October 28 (Zhang Nan) The "Action Plan for the High-Quality Development of the Zhengzhou Cultured Diamond Industry (2026-2028)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan") officially released by Zhengzhou, Henan Province on the 27th proposed to build a "city of cultured diamonds" as a guide, increase domestic and foreign market penetration and market share, strive for the initiative in industry competition, and form social recognition of "buy diamonds in Zhengzhou". By 2028, the scale of the entire industry will reach 20 billion yuan, creating a value center for the cultivated diamond industry.
The "Plan" proposes to build an industrial ecology of "three centers, one hub and one highland", namely a cultured diamond standard and digital trading center, a processing design and innovation center, a consumption and brand promotion center, a trade distribution hub, and a professional service highland. According to the plan, Zhengzhou will build a general digital trading service platform, encourage the formulation of standards, regularly publish price indexes, and enhance the influence of lab-grown diamond benchmark prices; attract and train a group of senior technicians and skilled talents in the field of lab-grown diamonds. Diamond cutting, design and setting personnel in Zhengzhou account for more than 20% of the country's total personnel; build a product inventory sharing platform, and the platform's annual rough transaction volume accounts for more than 30% of the country's, becoming a distribution center and trade hub for domestic lab-grown diamonds.
The "Plan" clarifies eight key tasks, including accelerating the completion of the automated and intelligent cutting and grinding chain of cultivated diamonds, consolidating and expanding the advantages of cultivated diamond growth equipment, and exploring domestic and foreign consumer markets for cultivated diamonds.
Among them, in terms of attracting processing enterprises, more than 5 cultivated diamond processing enterprises will be introduced by the end of 2026, and more than 15 cultivated diamond processing enterprises will be introduced by the end of 2028; in terms of brand cultivation, about 5 leading enterprises will be cultivated by the end of 2028, and 3 to 5 nationally renowned brands will be cultivated, striving to become a regional public brand (or collective trademark) recognized by the State Intellectual Property Office; in the field of inspection and testing, 2 to 3 international authoritative appraisal institutions will be introduced by the end of 2026.
In recent years, Henan’s Fat Donglai and Mixue Bingcheng have become popular. The "Plan" mentions that making full use of the advantages of Zhengzhou East Railway Station and Erqi Square transportation hubs, planning and building a diversified market for diamond jewelry retail and wholesale transactions, while attracting other domestic cultivated diamond brands to gather in the market, forming an interactive effect with Pandong Laidong Plaza Store, Mixue Bingcheng Headquarters, and Dehua Pedestrian Street, and enhancing the influence of Zhengzhou's cultivated diamond jewelry consumption and trading center. By the end of 2028, there will be no less than 20 domestic and foreign cultivated diamond jewelry brands; and we will strive to achieve a market transaction scale of over 5 billion yuan by the end of 2028. By the end of 2028, no less than 10 midstream and downstream companies will be introduced to cultivated diamonds, and the direct export output value will be 1 billion yuan; the jewelry import and export business will be more than 10 billion yuan.
Zhang Jie, president of Henan Zhongyuan Jewelry Innovation Research Institute, said in an interview that the "Plan" systematically responds to the structural bottleneck of "large production, small consumption, and weak brands" in the cultivated diamond industry, and provides a clear path for the industry to shift from production capacity advantages to brand and value advantages. As the ecological system of standards, trading, design, and branding accelerates and improves, Zhengzhou is expected to increase the voice and market awareness of cultivated diamonds in the global industrial chain.
