Path toward prosperity encounters roadblocks

Seeing the glittering gems in a department store, you would never associate them with the messy scene typical of a cubic zirconia-processing workshop in Wuzhou.

It is an industry that has brought wealth to many but one that faces mounting obstacles to its continued development.

On a recent day at Meng Ying's company, a local firm with annual sales of 10 million yuan ($1.6 million), about 20 young migrant workers sit busily cutting and polishing the diamond-like synthetic stones amid a cacophony of noise.

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The workshop's floor and walls, machines and workers' clothing are all coated with white zirconia powder.

But as one worker noted: "The new polishing machines are much better than the old models. There is not so much dust, because the new machines use water in the polishing process."

From the 1980s until about 2008, exposure to dust pollution caused lung disease and breathing problems for many workers in the factories.

"But many of the old generation of workers left here with legendary wealth," said another employee, who works eight hours a day to take home less than 3,000 yuan a month.

"Were it not for my child, I would have gone to work in Guangdong," she added. She and other workers quoted in this story were afraid to reveal their names.

According to jewelry expert Chen Biankun: "The environmental cost and damage to human health have not been calculated by the government when it comes to the industry's contribution to local economic growth."

Although the government set up a special office and built an industrial park to promote the synthetic gem business in 2010, it is increasingly the consensus among locals that the industry will move out of Wuzhou to inland China or Southeast Asia, where labor costs are lower.

"The workers are more conscious of their health and rights. And the poor intellectual property rights protection in Wuzhou is another obstacle for the industrial transformation," noted longtime business owner Liang Sujia.

When the price of artificial gemstones collapsed several years ago, workers tried their hand at becoming jewelry designers, with varying results.

A Guangdong businessman named Pan Xuping moved nine jewelry production enterprises from Guangzhou in 2009. "What attracted us was the huge production volume of Wuzhou," said Pan. "But a big headache has been losing skilled workers and the theft of our designs."

What local government values most is the industry's scale rather than its development potential, analysts say.

"The government should pay more attention to cultivating talent," said Wu Xiaojun, a jewelry design expert at Wuzhou College. "The Wuzhou gem industry should find its real competitiveness," he said. "Guangxi has a rich ethnic culture and long art history with strong local characteristics, which should be the selling points of Wuzhou's gem industry."