An international guitar industrial park in Zheng\u2019an county, Zunyi city, southwest China\u2019s Guizhou province, produces 6 million guitars a year, which accounts for 20 percent of the country\u2019s total annual guitar output and are sold to over 30 countries and regions.
\nThe county\u2019s success in developing the guitar industry is fundamentally attributed to the work of skillful and down-to-earth local guitar makers, said Chen Kunhua, an official in charge of vocational capacity building at the county\u2019s employment bureau.
\nBy building the labor service brand of \u201cZheng\u2019an Guitar Craftsman\u201d, the county has stimulated the growth of local guitar industry and made it a reliable source of income and road to prosperity for residents, according to Chen.
\nLocated on the border between Guizhou and Chongqing municipality, Zheng\u2019an nestles among high mountains and deep valleys, and lacks arable land. It has long been plagued by poverty.
\nIn 1987, a great number of Zheng\u2019an residents began to work as migrant workers in south China\u2019s Guangdong province, which marked the beginning of Guizhou\u2019s organized labor export to other regions.
\nGradually, over 200,000 people out of the county\u2019s total population of more than 600,000 worked outside their hometown all year round. Among these migrant workers, over 60,000 engaged in Guangdong\u2019s guitar industry and many became technical professionals and were promoted to managerial roles.
\nIn 2012, Zheng\u2019an launched a project to encourage residents working elsewhere to come back home to start a business, since when the local guitar industry has been incubated.
\n\u201cMy hometown established a guitar industrial park. Companies only need to take care of their operation inside the park, for the government handles everything outside the park,\u201d said Liu Jiangbo, one of the first batch of migrant workers who returned home to start their own businesses. They were motivated by a series of preferential policies concerning rent, tax and business environment construction rolled out by the local government.
\nIn March 2016, Liu\u2019s guitar company settled in the guitar industrial park and began with production. \u201cGuitar-making is a labor-intensive industry that depends on manual work for nearly 70 percent of its procedures, even with machines,\u201d he said.
\nIn addition to technical professionals who came back to Zheng\u2019an together with him, he also hired many people living near the industrial park. \u201cWe have built and expanded three production lines, and employed nearly 200 people. Most of them are local women,\u201d Liu pointed out.
\nWithin merely several years, a total of 104 companies have joined the industrial park, generating an annual comprehensive output value of 6 billion yuan ($941 million). At the same time, a complete guitar industrial chain covering guitar making, sale, logistics and other related industries has gradually taken shape.
\n\u201cThe local government has clear positioning for guitar industry. It has regarded the industry as a pillar industry and rolled out favorable policies, which are encouraging for practitioners in the industry,\u201d Chen said, noting that Zheng\u2019an has become a well-known guitar production base.
\nAfter over 200 procedures, high-quality guitars made in Zheng\u2019an are brought to other regions from the mountainous county. Gradually, a stable workforce has been formed.
\nThe local guitar industry has directly provided jobs for 9,242 residents and lifted 6,690 of them out of poverty. Nearly 100,000 people have secured employment in related industries.
\nIn 2019, the labor service brand \u201cZheng\u2019an Guitar Craftsman\u201d was officially launched. Craftsmen under the brand are not only limited to guitar makers, but also include people engaging in the supply and sale of guitars and working in upstream or downstream industries, as each link of the industrial chain requires workers to always pursue excellence through hard work, according to Chen.
\nTo encourage companies to attach importance to talent cultivation, the local government organizes regular activities to help them apply for municipal-level and provincial-level guitar master studio accreditation.
\n\u201cThe studios that obtain the accreditation can receive a subsidy of 100,000 yuan,\u201d Chen said, adding that Zheng\u2019an county now has 12 such studios in total.
\nThe local government has also helped companies cooperate with schools to improve the skills of guitar craftsmen, Chen pointed out.
\nIn October 2019, the first China Guitar Making Competition was held in Zheng\u2019an, gathering over 300 guitar makers from across China.
\n\u201cThe event provides a platform for guitar makers to communicate with each other,\u201d Chen said, adding that many craftsmen in Zheng\u2019an won awards at the competition.
\nChen believes that such guitar-making skill competitions have helped people better realize the urgency of building a guitar industry standard system.
\nThe government will continuously guide vocational schools and the guitar industry in building and improving the industry standard system and formulating relevant vocational skill standards to create more development space for Zheng\u2019an guitar craftsmen, Chen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An international guitar industrial park in Zheng\u2019an county, Zunyi city, southwest China\u2019s Guizhou province, produces 6 million guitars a year, which accounts for 20 percent of the country\u2019s total annual guitar output and are sold to over 30 countries and regions. The county\u2019s success in developing the guitar industry is fundamentally attributed to the work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18,3096,329],"class_list":{"0":"post-239308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-guitar","10":"tag-industry"},"yoast_head":"\n