China News Service, Yueyang, September 30 (Feng Jun) Linxiang, Yueyang, Hunan, on both sides of the Chang'an River on the south bank of the Yangtze River, fishermen dressed in orange and gray clothes and white hats sit on fishing boxes, with fishing rods reaching the water. From time to time, some people lift the rods and catch fish. The bridge across the river was turned into a natural spectator stand, and the guardrails were crowded with citizens who came to watch.
The 2026 Fourth "Linxiang Buoy Cup" Golden Autumn Fishing Competition is in full swing. This event, called the "World Cup of Fishing" by fishing friends, is becoming an engine for the local sport fishing economy. The deeper change is that relying on the resources of the Yangtze River coastline, the Linxiang buoy industry is transforming into an intelligent, green and high-end industry, upgrading from "Made in Linxiang" to "Linxiang Standard", actively promoting the international standardization of fishing sports, and accelerating the move from exporting products to overseas exports of standards and brands.
A buoy leverages the sport fishing economy
Sister Yang and her husband from Guangxi are both senior fishing enthusiasts and travel to various places to participate in fishing competitions all year round. "I am definitely here for the 1.09 million grand prize." On September 27, the two arrived in Linxiang in advance, hoping to make up for the regret of not being able to place in the 2024 competition this year.
The competition brings fishing friends from all over the world to Linxiang. A total of 512 teams and 1,024 fishermen participated in this competition, which adopted the "1+2+1" competition system: 1 golden autumn fishing competition, 2 night revival play-offs, and 1 championship night peak showdown. The main competition championship prize is as high as 1.09 million yuan. The event will simultaneously set up special awards such as women's competition, Lao Dang Yizhuang, and team competition, taking into account professional competition and public participation.
Linxiang is located on the south bank of the Yangtze River. The territory is densely covered with water networks. The Chang'an River runs through the city, and is dotted with Huanggai Lake and Ye Lake. A city's living water has become a natural endowment for the development of the sport fishing economy. After four rounds of polishing, the "Linxiang Buoy Cup" has been exposed more than 3 billion times across the entire network, driving a total of 7.6 billion yuan in related consumption, firmly ranking among the top fishing events in the country.
This event is jointly sponsored by the Linxiang Municipal Government and Douyin Mall. The "game venue + live broadcast room" simultaneously lists popular fishing gear, and a limited-time flash sale directly converts event traffic into orders. It is estimated that the total number of live broadcasts of the event will exceed 50 million, and the number of short video topic views will exceed 500 million, attracting more than 70,000 contestants and tourists.
Linxiang Linchuang Warehousing and Logistics Co., Ltd. mainly provides supporting services for local buoy e-commerce companies. Its business covers express logistics, third-party cloud warehouses, production and procurement of buoy outer packaging materials, etc. According to Zhang Dazhi, the person in charge, the fishing competition has brought a large number of e-commerce orders to fishing tackle companies, and logistics has also experienced an explosion of orders. On September 29, the company's cloud warehouse received 8,000 orders, compared with about 5,000 orders in normal times; the express delivery business volume reached 73,000 orders, and the average daily delivery volume in normal times was 48,000 orders. He predicts that the company's shipment volume will increase by more than 30% during the event than usual.
It is reported that Linxiang is committed to promoting the integration of "sports, industry, culture and tourism", planning to build 5 high-quality sport fishing routes, 6 major sport fishing bases, and 15 characteristic fishing grounds, and promote the upgrade of a single event into a global sport fishing festival. Li Ming, deputy secretary of the Linxiang Municipal Party Committee and director of the United Front Work Department, said that in the next step, the local government will invite international organizations and overseas purchasers to watch the competition and promote business negotiations between the competition venues; make up for the shortcomings of the industrial chain such as fishing rods and fishing lines, extend to the field of outdoor leisure equipment, and promote the transformation of event traffic into product sales and city brand influence.
From handmade workshop to smart high-end
Nowadays, the Linxiang buoy industry has long bid farewell to the traditional manual workshop model, and its technological content is becoming more and more abundant. At the opening ceremony of this competition, local companies released a batch of new products: smart buoys that can sense 0.1 mm sinking displacement signals, luminous floats that automatically change color the moment they bite the hook, and carbon buoys that use carbon fiber to control the density at 1.5 to 1.8 grams/cubic centimeter. Local buoy companies have obtained more than 600 patents, and 34 have been rated as national high-tech enterprises.
There is an industry consensus in the fishing tackle circle that “Linxiang’s standard is the best, Weihai’s pole is the best”. In 1992, modern buoy manufacturing technology was launched in Linxiang. After more than 30 years of development, there are more than 3,000 buoy-related companies in the local area, with an annual output of more than 200 million buoys, accounting for 80% of global production, and creating stable employment for 60,000 people. The output value of the entire industry chain is close to 9 billion yuan in 2025, and is expected to exceed 10 billion yuan next year.
Intelligent manufacturing is reshaping this traditional "handmade" craft. Chihai Fishing Tackle independently develops automated grinding machines and painting machines. One worker can manage more than 10 pieces of equipment at the same time. The grinding efficiency is 10 times higher than manual work, and the painting efficiency is nearly 14 times. The annual output of high-end buoys reaches 1.5 million. Jinrui Outdoor has the world's first AI smart hook binding technology, with an annual output of fully automatic sub-line double hooks exceeding 1 billion sets, and accounting for more than half of the domestic market.
Some companies are making the track narrower and deeper: Yuwo Tongle Fishing Tackle specializes in silver carp and bighead carp buoys, and its products have entered more than 2,000 fishing gear stores across the country, accounting for more than half of the silver carp and bighead carp buoys in the Heikeng section; Sichuan Ze Fishing Tackle specializes in tilapia buoys, with annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan; As the first company in the world to apply 3D printing technology to the production of fishing gear, Ruiqi Outdoor has independently developed more than 1,000 kinds of simulated fishing baits and other products, and 100% of its products are exported, covering the European, American, Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian markets. It is the benchmark for Linxiang fishing gear's "brand overseas".
From "Made in Linxiang" to "Linxiang Standard"
Linxiang buoys are not only sold globally, but also have the final say in the global market. According to Hu Jun, deputy director of Beijing Zhongda Huayuan Certification Center and leader of the ISO/TC83 domestic technical counterpart working group, Linxiang already possesses the hard power of "the buoy capital of the world", but "standards are the real threshold for industries to go overseas."
He pointed out that Linxiang currently has relatively complete standards in the field of buoy subdivisions, but there is still a gap in the internationally unified standards for fishing rods, fishing lines, fishhooks and other categories. A large number of small and micro enterprises have uneven standardization capabilities, and the problem of "small and scattered" is still prominent; and there is still a lack of a specialized sub-technical committee for fishing equipment under the ISO/TC83 framework, and domestic enterprises can only passively accept foreign rules.
"From 'Made in Linxiang' to 'Linxiang Standards', from 'products going overseas' to 'standards going overseas', this is the only way for the high-quality development of Linxiang's buoy industry." Hu Jun suggested that Linxiang enterprises should actively participate in the discussion and drafting of international standard proposals, and transform Linxiang's technical advantages in buoys and other fields into international proposals. At the same time, the two-wheel drive of "standards + certification" will force small and medium-sized enterprises to transform into compliance, making standardization a public capability of industrial clusters.
Li Ming also admitted that Linxiang's buoy industry is large-scale, but its soft power is insufficient. It has three major pain points: weak voice in international standards, insufficient brand bargaining power, and low participation in the international market. Export products need to repeatedly adapt to different technical standards of various countries.
He further introduced that Linxiang has completed the submission of international standard project materials and started relevant review work to promote the "Linxiang Standard" from scratch. At the same time, we guide enterprises to transform into smart, green, and high-end, organize groups to go overseas, deploy overseas warehouses and cross-border e-commerce, focus on developing European, American, and Southeast Asian markets, and promote the industry to move from exporting only products overseas to exporting standards and brands overseas.
