Zhuji pearl conference spotlights digital sales and fashion runway

In Zhuji, pearls were treated less as ornaments than as infrastructure. The Sixth Shanxiahu Pearl Conference brought more than 600 guests from China, France and Australia to the city from May 20 to 24, and the message was clear: the world’s largest freshwater pearl center intends to keep setting the pace for how pearls are farmed, sold and styled.

The opening ceremony made that ambition visible in the most persuasive way possible, with a runway show of more than 200 pearl jewelry designs produced in Zhuji. That was not a token fashion flourish. It framed the city’s pearl business as a design system as much as a production base, with the conference agenda extending beyond display to cross-industry exchanges, cross-border e-commerce promotions, live-streaming sales and marketplace events. Sixteen industry influencers were also named Promotion Ambassadors, a sign that Zhuji wants its pearl story carried as forcefully online as it is in trade halls.

The scale behind that push is hard to ignore. Shanxiahu town, in northeast Zhuji, is described as the world’s largest hub for freshwater pearls and as the center of a complete value chain that stretches from farming and processing to design and sales. Earlier reporting put the town at 80 percent of China’s freshwater pearl output and 70 percent of the world’s, with sales surpassing 40 billion yuan in the previous year. Since its establishment in 2008, the China Pearls & Jewelry International City has served as the world’s largest freshwater pearl trading hub, concentrating the commerce that gives Zhuji unusual leverage over supply and pricing.

This year’s conference also followed a pattern of steady escalation. The fifth Shanxiahu World Pearl Conference, held in May 2025, focused on global pearl industry trends and freshwater pearl farming technology innovation. By 2023, Shanxiahu had already welcomed more than 200 domestic and international jewelry designers and hosted the World Pearl Design Contest for a third consecutive year, evidence that the town has been working to move pearls from commodity to creative currency.

That aspiration reached beyond Zhejiang province in late April, when Zhuji staged a pearl promotion event in Paris, described as the first independent presentation of Zhuji pearls in the French capital. The roundtable there explored how Chinese pearls can speak in an international brand language, with discussion centered on pearl design, cultural narrative and contemporary consumption. Together, the Paris event and the Zhuji conference show a city intent on doing more than trading pearls. It is trying to define the terms on which the next wave of pearl jewelry will be made, marketed and desired.