Shenzhen

Shenzhen lies on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary, across the border from Hong Kong. Wikipedia’s account says the rural Bao’an County was renamed Shenzhen in 1979 and that the city had about 30,000 people in 1980.⁴

Wikipedia’s accounts say Shenzhen became one of China’s four special economic zones in May 1980, open to foreign investment, and that the Shekou Industrial Zone, run by the Hong Kong-based China Merchants group, had been approved in January 1979.^4, 5

Hong Kong’s watch firms needed cheaper labour. Donzé writes that from the late 1980s they moved production and assembly to the Shenzhen economic zone and to Dongguan, while keeping headquarters, design and marketing in Hong Kong; China Daily dates the start of Shenzhen’s watch industry to that move north in the 1980s.^1, 2

By 2012 Shenzhen was described by China Daily as the world’s largest outsourcing base for watches: about 1,100 watch companies, which made 800 million watches in 2010, more than 43 per cent of world production, by the count of the Shenzhen Watch and Clock Association, with more than 80 per cent exported, mainly to Europe and the United States.²

State media in 2022 gave Shenzhen 42 per cent of world and 53 per cent of Chinese watch output, and said that more than 95 per cent of the parts for watches made in the city were made locally.³

The local brands grew out of assembly. China Daily names Fiyta and Ebohr in Shenzhen, Tian Wang, set up there in 1988 by a Hong Kong group, and Rossini in Zhuhai as China’s four biggest domestic brands, and says Ebohr began as an assembly plant for European and American orders.^2, 7

The China Watch & Clock Fair, held in Shenzhen since 1988, began as a trade fair for component suppliers and contract makers; SJX reports that Swiss and Japanese movement makers, ETA, Ronda and Miyota, exhibited there in 2017.^8, 9

Shenzhen’s plants did not make all the movements: Donzé notes that Hong Kong companies also bought Swiss or Japanese movements as their customers wished, and that some bought into European movement makers to secure supply.¹

Donzé records Hong Kong firms that moved their production to China, Dailywin in 1988 and Crystal Electronic and Gordon C in 1997, and others that failed to adapt and closed.¹

An APEC case study of 2015 describes a Hong Kong maker whose cases, bracelets, hands and buckles came from the Pearl River Delta, an hour to three hours from its Hong Kong factory, and puts assembly in China at about 3 dollars a watch against up to 9 in Hong Kong.¹⁰

Hong Kong became a re-exporter of watches made across the border. Donzé writes that its watch imports from China grew from 50 million dollars in 1980 to 885 million in 1990 and 7.4 billion in 2010.¹

China exported 589.5 million watches in 2025, at an average export price of 4 dollars, by the FH’s count; how many of them were made in Shenzhen is not given.¹¹

The city also became a centre for smartwatches. A China Daily government-services page of 2018 calls Shenzhen China’s largest base for wearable devices, with about a thousand firms.¹²

The share figures for Shenzhen come from its own industry association and from state media, as China Daily reports them; no independent count of the city’s watch output, or of its workforce, was found for this page.^2, 3