Made in China, sold to the world

陈小将

Editor’s note: In 2021, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, China's foreign trade demonstrated strong resilience, surging 21.4 percent to 39.1 trillion yuan ($6.05 trillion) while its exports expanded by 21.2 percent year-on-year to 21.73 trillion yuan.
While the world is no stranger to made-in-China goods, it may not be familiar with some of these interesting yet under-reported commodities.
Let’s have a look at some of these exports!

      Glasses     

Have you ever thought about the glasses you wear may have come from a small city Danyang in East China’s Jiangsu province?
Danyang, often called the "City of Glasses", is China's largest production and export base for optical frames and lenses, as it produces more than 100 million spectacle frames and more than 400 million spectacle lenses every year.
The city plays a crucial role in the global eyewear market, with its annual spectacle lenses production accounting for 75 percent of China's production and 45 percent of the global total.
The city is also the world's largest production base for spectacle lenses, Asia's largest eyewear distribution center and China's largest eyewear production base. The eyewear industry in the city traces its origin to the 1960s and employs 50,000 people spread across 1,600 companies. In 2019, 23 million blue-light-blocking spectacle lenses were sold in Danyang.
According to Market research company iResearch, the market size of eyewear products is expected to surpass 100 billion yuan ($15.76 billion) in 2024.