How a Chinese County Went From Growing Spicy Chillies to Sparkly Diamonds

China's 'diamond capital', said to produce over half the annual output of synthetic diamonds in the country, is disrupting the world's supply.

- Michelle Ng

ZHECHENG COUNTY, Henan. There is no airport and the nearest high-speed train station is an hour's car ride away, through the vast fields of red peppers that are used to make the popular chilli crisp Lao Gan Ma.

In the heart of the sleepy county, there is just one unassuming four-storey mall, where the most well-known brands are Haidilao and Huawei. Food is cheap here - a hearty bowl of noodles costs around 10 yuan (S$1.80).

So it is with a sense of curiosity that I explore Zhecheng, in the central Chinese province of Henan, in search of something typically associated with wealth and luxury: diamonds.

A Chinese joke goes: Diamonds are forever, but one can make you bankrupt. At Henan Heshi Diamond, however, you can get a one-carat engagement ring for as little as 5,000 yuan.

The catch? The diamond is grown in a lab, which takes just 15 days to turn lowly carbon into a sparkling gem that appears no different from one mined from the earth.

A ring made with a comparable natural diamond by a well-known jewellery brand would likely cost 100,000 yuan, Henan Heshi Diamond's manager Zhu Yongchao told me as he led me around the company's factory floor, located at the back of the boutique.

"In the past, diamonds were very expensive and considered a luxury item. But now, we can make value-for-money diamonds, which is a good thing that ought to be made accessible to more people," he said.

China's burgeoning lab-grown diamond industry was responsible for more than 70 per cent of the world's output in 2023, totalling 22 million carats, according to a recent China Daily report. That prodigious output is now disrupting the global diamond supply and changing attitudes towards the coveted gem.

The global synthetic diamond market was valued at US$24 billion (S$32 billion) in 2022 and is projected to more than double to US$59.2 billion by 2032, according to Allied Market Research.