Guitar makers in Zheng'an, a small county in the mountains of southwest China's Guizhou Province, are fine-tuning their industry as they work to transform a poverty-stricken area in to a world-class guitar production base.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, 9.23 million people in Guizhou have been lifted out of poverty, ranking it first for the number of people who have been lifted out of poverty or relocated among all the country’s provinces and regions.
Zheng Chuanjiu, 48, is a pioneer for the guitar industry in Zheng'an.
At the age of 19, he went to work in a guitar factory in south China's Guangdong Province with his elder brother. In ten years, he was able to master the more than 200 steps it takes to make a high-quality guitar and opened his own guitar factory.
In 2012, when people in Zhengan county was looking for investors for development, they learned that there were as many as 50,000 people from Zheng'an who, like Zheng Chuanjiu, worked in the guitar industry in Guangdong.
Zheng'an authorities decided to create an industrial park for guitar producers, with preferential policies such as rent exemptions, logistics subsidies, and corporate services, to attract these talented craftsmen back home to start businesses.
"It was very difficult for us to come back at the beginning. There were no highways, no upstream and downstream industries, and no skilled workers," Zheng said.
In its early days the industry suffered from poor transport links, incomplete infrastructure, and a lack of skilled workers, but at the end of 2015, the small county was finally connected to a highway, opening Zheng'an to investment.
"We focus on the guitar industry and provide supporting services for the entire industry chain. Now, basically in our park, a guitar company can get all the supporting services it needs for production within a ten-minute drive, which reduces the production cost of the entire company and makes it more competitive in the market," said Zhu Meifang, director of the management service center at the Zheng'an Economic Development Zone.
Over the past decade, the guitar industry has taken root in Zheng'an, and more than 130 related companies have been established here.
"After these enterprises arrived at the park, each enterprise was assigned a staff member to take charge. Problems within the factory and development issues were handed over to the enterprise, while problems outside the factory were handed over to our staff members," Zhu said.
After more than a decade of development, Zheng'an County has become the world's largest guitar manufacturing base, and one out of every seven guitars in the world now comes from Zheng'an. The industry has also created 14,000 jobs for locals and attracted foreign producers to open businesses here.
"I've been all over the world building guitars for more than 45 years. We started looking at moving here, to finish up my career, making my own brand," said Curtis Alan Hendrick, a U.S. guitar maker.
Guitar makers in Guizhou's mountains find perfect pitch to alleviate rural poverty
