The Industry moving North

Gangcai industry developed in tandem with other manufacturing and processing industries in Hong Kong, and faced similar challenges. Just as gangcai reached new heights, a structural change began to take place—following the launch of economic reform and opening-up of Chinese Mainland in 1978, the Chinese Government introduced measures to attract foreign investment. Many gangcai factories, taking into account the cheap labour force, land and materials for lower production cost, as well as the larger market and favourable conditions to develop new products, so they established production lines in the Pearl River Delta region. During this period, some painted porcelain factories that seized the opportunity and with good management flourished into large enterprises. Most of these factories were able to improve production techniques and adopt more flexible marketing strategies to venture towards new opportunities. Between the 1980s and 1990s, numerous Hong Kong-based painted porcelain companies had been recorded to have established factories in various places in the Chinese Mainland, including Fengxi in Chaozhou, Gaobei in Dabu, Shuibei in Shenzhen, Yuanzhou in Boluo, Zhuhai and Huizhou, etc. At its peak, a single large order for painted porcelain could be in the tone of tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces. Production lines were extremely busy, kilns operated continuously, and orders flowed in endlessly. For firing painted porcelain, electric kilns of typical size were no longer sufficient, more efficient tunnel-styled kilns were needed. Painted porcelain products, which had traditionally been shipped in wooden crates with limited capacity, were now transported overseas in shipping containers. There are records of large-scale companies operated factories in Chinese Mainland covering a hundred thousand square feet, employing some seven or eight hundred staff, with warehouses constantly housing tens of shipping containers to handle the frequent movements of goods.

As the porcelain manufacturers moved north to establish production bases, it was common at the time to have the key painting masters and technical staff to move to the Mainland with the factories to oversee production and to train the locals, whilst drastically scaling back or closing production lines in Hong Kong, retaining only a front company and a design department. Consequently, many local painting masters lost their jobs or had to work in another field. Since the advent of mass production techniques for stencilling and decals, there was already less common painting work previously undertaken by artists needed; faced with this latest challenge, the local talent pool has dwindled even further.

Examples of gangcai industry moving north into the Chinese Mainland:

Competition faced by Gangcai

Meanwhile, after the Cultural Revolution concluded, the painted porcelain factories in Guangzhou resumed production, through a period of adjustment, they too flourished in the 1980s, with products priced far more cheaper than those from Hong Kong. These factories were not only competitors to those Hong Kong firms moving northwards, but also posed a significant threat to the smaller porcelain factories in Hong Kong aiming only at the local market. The local-oriented factories mostly continued to follow the old production mode and tended to stick to common traditional patterns and colours only, with far less market sensitivity than the export-oriented factories. Caught between internal and external pressures and the ebb and flow of economic tides, porcelain factories in Hong Kong began to close down from the mid or late 1970s. The situation worsened from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, leaving many in the gangcai industry with no choice but to give up on their trade.