China Home Furnishing Crafts Industry Base Settles in Anxi
Report from our newspaper
Recently, the 2016 "China Gift" Brand Promotion Conference and the Second Five-Year Council Meeting of the China Ceremonial and Leisure Products Association were held in Beijing, and Anxi County was awarded the title of "China Home Furnishing Crafts Industry Base" distinctive zone.
At the brand promotion conference, the China National Light Industry Council and the China Ceremonial and Leisure Products Industry Association read out the commendation decision for the "China Home Furnishing Crafts Industry Base" distinctive zone, and Zhang Chonghe, President of the China National Light Industry Council, presented the plaque of "China Home Furnishing Crafts Industry Base - Anxi" distinctive zone to Anxi County.
Anxi County is the hometown of Chinese rattan and iron crafts. After more than 40 years of development, from the initial "bamboo weaving" to "rattan weaving" and then to "rattan and iron crafts", it has now developed into a home furnishing crafts industry, forming an industrial cluster with more than 400 enterprises, nearly 120,000 employees, and an annual output value of the entire industrial chain exceeding 12 billion yuan. It has become the second largest livelihood industry after the tea industry, and has been successively awarded the title of "Capital of Chinese Rattan and Iron Crafts" by the Ministry of Agriculture and approved as the "Chinese Rattan and Iron Crafts Export Base" by the Ministry of Commerce. In 2014, Anxi's "bamboo and rattan weaving technique" was included in the national representative project list of intangible cultural heritage. Products are exported to more than 60 countries and regions, accounting for half of the country's similar products.
In recent years, Anxi County has continuously issued policies to guide home furnishing crafts enterprises to strengthen technological innovation, develop and research new products, and protect and encourage applications for design patents; increase collective brand publicity and promotion, cultivate and build independent brands, and enhance brand awareness, enterprise competitiveness and industry influence. At present, the county has established a 1 million yuan crafts industry innovation fund, a 5 million yuan crafts industry construction and development fund, and other special support funds given priority for new product development.
At the same time, Anxi County has also built the China Home Furnishing Crafts City, which has become an important platform for home furnishing crafts merchants to display brands and sell products domestically; it has successively established 4 county-level professional research institutes and 16 company research institutes, recruiting senior professional designers and graduates of fine arts academies, dedicated to the development of new product styles. (Zhang Guilin)