Cheaper ‘gold lookalike’ jewellery drives a surge in Chinese exports

What is a “gold alternative”?

“Ping ti” (平替), short for an affordable substitute, is a popular Chinese shopping term for a cheaper product that gives much the same look or use as an expensive one. Here it means jewellery that looks like gold but contains less of it, or none at all.

The reports say international gold and silver prices have stayed high, so overseas buyers have changed what they order. The demand is mainly for copper jewellery and pieces with a lower gold content.[2][3]

The numbers

Customs figures show China’s exports of jewellery made of, or clad in, precious metals passed US$10.2 billion in January–September 2026, 17.55% more than a year earlier. Guangdong, the country’s main jewellery-exporting province, accounted for US$7.3 billion, and its growth of more than 36.54% was well above the national rate.

In Shanwei, one contract manufacturer of pearl- and gemstone-set jewellery, which ships mainly to the United States, exported US$6.84 million in the first nine months, up 69.4%. More than 80% of that was 14K gold. Another company said 18K gold had fallen from 18% of its shipments last year to 12% this year.[2][3][4]

Copper instead of silver, thinner plating

Chen Tingxiang, general manager of a trading company, said 60% of his customers had moved from buying silver jewellery to copper this year because of the rise in the silver price, and that the firm’s copper orders were up 50% year on year in January–August.

Chen Yurong, who runs an electroplating business, said a third of his overseas customers had lowered the amount of precious metal they wanted in the plating; orders that used to ask for 24K gold plating mostly asked for 18K this year. Another firm has opened a workshop for laboratory-grown diamonds, and its deputy manufacturing manager, Wu Dingyun, said sales of its silver and copper designs were up about 40–50%.[2][3]

Why Shanwei

According to the reports, Shanwei’s jewellery cluster covers design, manufacturing, polishing and plating, with factories for different stages no more than five minutes apart in some industrial parks. A buyer from Yemen named Mohan, who buys copper jewellery there for the Middle East, said he works with more than 100 factories and that some necklaces with a particular side-flower design are made only in the Meilong area of Shanwei.[3]