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Nov 4

CIBJO President acknowledges China’s role in jewellery at 2024 CIBJO Congress


With the World Jewellery Confederation staging the CIBJO Congress this year’s for the first time in mainland China, it acknowledges the central role played the world’s second largest economy in the global jewellery business, CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri said in his opening address to gathering


The congress is taking place between November 2 and November at the Shangri-La Quintan in Shanghai China saw dramatic growth in its consumer markets in the period following the so-called Great Recession, which followed the global 2007-8 financial crisis, when relative to the major Western markets it was relatively unscathed.


“The belief at the time, or more accurately I would say the hope at the time, was that there would be no limit – sales and revenues would be keeping on climbing, as more and more Chinese consumers became enraptured by the lure of fine jewellery,” Dr. Cavalieri said.


“And that might have been the case,” he continued, “at least for a while longer, were it not for an almost invisible threat that took over all our lives in 2020 – the COVID virus. In the space of just months the world shut down, and it would be about two years before we returned to a sense of normality.”


“While the accelerated growth rates of the 2010s are almost certainly behind us, China continues to outpace most other developed markets – and, yes, I think it is correct in 2024 to refer to China as a developed market – rather than simply a developing market,” Dr Cavalieri said.


China is today the world’s largest consumer of coloured gemstones, gold and platinum gold jewellery, and unsurprisingly of jade, or Fei Cui as it is popularly referred to, the CIBJO President stated.


“But what also is significant is that China, like India, is shifting from being a country that manufactures goods that are designed or inspired by mainly Western players, to becoming a trendsetter in its own right, influencing what is being bought worldwide, and exporting its intellectual capital and not only its production capacity,” he noted.


“It’s no longer wrong to state that the single-lane highway of taste and knowledge moving eastward has become a dual carriage way moving in both directions, where Chinese and other Eastern trends and innovations find equally receptive markets in the traditional Western consumer centres. We live in a unified global market,” Dr Cavalieri said.


“To optimize its potential, much of what do here at the CIBJO Congress is of critical importance,” Dr. Cavalieri stressed.



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