County in SW China’s Guizhou boosts local prosperity in tune with expanding guitar industry

Going back home with guitar manufacturing techniques they mastered, migrant workers from southwest China’s Guizhou Province have contributed their efforts to the construction of a guitar industry in their own hometown.

A worker makes guitars in the guitar industrial park in Zheng’an county, Guizhou Province on March 25, 2020. (Photo/Xinhua)

Zheng’an used to be an extremely impoverished county in Zunyi city, Guizhou Province. About one third of the county’s total population at 600,000 were migrant workers, including 60,000 who were involved in the guitar industry in south China’s Guangdong Province.

In 2012, Zheng’an initiated a project which aimed to attract migrant workers who had left their hometown in the county to work elsewhere to return back to their hometown and contribute their efforts to the construction of the locality. In the meantime, a guitar industry has been established in the locality, with the local government offering a slew of favorable taxation and rent policies and striving to build a hospitable environment for businesses.

Liu Jiangbo was among the first batch of people to come back home. In March 2016, his musical instrument company started operations inside a guitar industrial park. According to Liu, nearly 70 percent of the work associated with guitar manufacturing was completed by workers, while the rest was done by machinery. To expand the operations of his factory, Liu built another three production lines and employed nearly 200 people to cope with the extended operations.

The guitar industrial park produces about 6 million guitars in any given year, which accounts for 20 percent of the country’s total guitar production volume, with the guitars reaching more than 30 countries and regions around the world. In just a few years, 104 companies have established factories in the industrial park, pushing the park’s annual comprehensive output value to reach 6 billion yuan.

Chen Kunhua, an official with the employment bureau with Zheng’an county, said the guitar industry has opened up a new channel for local residents to increase their incomes. He further explained that the guitar industry has provided jobs for 9,242 people, among whom 6,690 have since bid farewell to their previous state of impoverishment. Nearly 100,000 people have been directly or indirectly involved in the industry.

Currently, Zheng’an county is striving to formulate a set of standards to guarantee the quality of guitars produced locally. In October 2019, the country’s first guitar production competition was held in Zheng’an, with quite a large number of local craftsmen from Zheng’an having won awards at the competition in final rounds.

Chen pointed out that through the skills competitions, industry insiders have come to realize the urgency of formulating standards regarding guitar manufacturing. Days ago, a set of skills assessment standards jointly drafted by the local human resources and social security bureau of Zheng’an and a vocational school, together with other parties, was approved by provincial authorities. The standards will be adopted to assess craftsmen in their drafting skills in the future.