Losing its sparkle? How Chinese artificial gems are upending the diamond market

Creating a new diamond used to be a process spanning millions or even billions of years. Now, it takes about a week.

Inside specialised factories, hulking 50-tonne machines simulate the crushing pressure and extreme temperatures inside the Earth’s crust, transforming seed crystals into flawless, glittering stones in just a few days.

Zhongjing Diamond, a company based in China’s central province of Hubei, has nearly 300 of the machines humming around the clock, which together mint some 600,000 carats of crude diamonds every year.

China has pioneered the production of lab-grown diamonds, allowing its factories to churn out precious stones at an unprecedented scale. The country makes more rough artificial diamonds than the rest of the world combined.

And the stones are rapidly winning over consumers. Sales of lab-grown diamonds are booming, with Fortune Business Insights projecting that the market will grow from US$25.89 billion in 2024 to US$74.45 billion by 2032.

“They sparkle just as brightly, and for a fraction of the cost,” said Fan Zuhua, deputy general manager at Zhongjing Diamond.

But the rise of lab-grown stones is also sparking questions amid shifting trends. As diamonds transform from a precious resource into an industrial product, many are wondering: have synthetic gems been eroding demand for the real thing?

South China Morning Post