"India's Diamond Invasion: 60% of Products Originate from Henan"

The unpredictable Indians have made their way into the diamond industry.

Starting from 2018, the international diamond community faced a significant shock, partly due to a sudden surge in Indian diamond sales. In just half a year, their export volume exceeded the total exports since India's independence 70 years prior.

For a while, Indian diamonds flooded the European and American markets, and prices were on the verge of a major collapse.

As a result, global diamond manufacturers could not sit still and expressed their concerns: "Brother, if you keep playing this way, diamonds will fall to the price of cabbage in three to five years. How can we sell them then? Please, stop!"

Subsequently, international capital jointly accused India of disrupting the market and pressured India to reduce production to prevent diamond prices from collapsing.

However, India, of course, did not admit to this and cried out in innocence:

India has no diamond mines, does not mine diamonds, and does not even have production lines. How can we reduce production capacity? We do not produce diamonds; we are merely the carriers of diamonds.

So where do the diamonds in India come from?

The answer is Made in Henan. It turns out that Indian businessmen import a large number of artificial diamonds from Henan, rebrand and package them, and then sell them to Europe and America. They act as middlemen, making a fortune.

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In severe situations, with a bit of persuasion from their neighbors, 60% of the diamonds worn by European and American brides are from Henan.And most crucially, even the most professional institutions, using the most sophisticated equipment, cannot distinguish between Henan's artificial diamonds and natural diamonds, allowing the cunning neighbor to exploit the loophole and create a unique "Indian playstyle".

Why are Henan's artificial diamonds so impressive? Is there really a difference between artificial and natural diamonds?

Made in Henan, it may overturn many people's imaginations.

A century-old scam, diamond marketing

When it comes to diamonds, one cannot help but mention the world-renowned advertising slogan:

"A Diamond Is Forever."

Seventy years ago, this phrase was coined by De Beers, the world's largest diamond giant. Since then, diamonds, these crystalline forms composed of carbon, have been forcibly linked with love, serving as a symbol of true love that has deeply resonated with people.

Even though a middle school student knows that diamonds are essentially no different from coal, when it comes to marriage, a shiny diamond ring is still an indispensable item. Being proposed to by a prince charming with a diamond ring is a scene many girls dream of.

Do you think this is the limit of De Beers' diamond marketing?

The answer is far from it. In the 1980s, the former Soviet Union discovered a giant diamond mine, and a large number of small diamonds flooded the diamond market. For a time, De Beers faced an unprecedented business crisis.De Beers, however, was not the least bit panicked. On one hand, it formed a price alliance with the Soviet Union, and on the other, it shifted the direction of its marketing campaigns. Instead of boasting about the size of diamonds, it began to promote the craftsmanship involved in making diamonds.

De Beers, along with several other major diamond companies, formed a business consortium and concocted five methods of diamond cutting, establishing industry standards such as the 4Cs for diamond grading.

As a result, the diamond industry has become such that if you want to enter the market, you must follow the rules set by De Beers and its associates. In other words, the value of your diamonds is determined by what De Beers and its peers say.

Because of this, even though diamonds have been continuously mined to the tune of 500 million carats to date, there is still a demand that outstrips supply. People are well aware of the pitfalls, yet every year countless individuals still flock to it.

It can be said that De Beers has thoroughly studied people's psychology. It is not so much selling diamonds as it is selling a symbolic meaning.

Henan's artificial diamonds disrupt the diamond market.

Given that natural diamonds are so expensive, is it possible to use the "modern industrial fist" to shatter De Beers' "marketing myth"?

The emergence of artificial diamonds makes everything possible.

In fact, although the technology of artificial diamonds seems high-end, it actually appeared in Sweden as early as 1953.

At that time, these synthetic diamonds were widely used in the industrial sector, and no one had yet thought of replacing the position of natural diamonds.Until China, on the other side of the ocean, encountered an industrial challenge:

At that time, the First Five-Year Plan began to be implemented, and synthetic diamonds were hailed as the "teeth of industry," indispensable for industrial production. Due to the cutoff of external sources, self-reliance in research and development was the only option.

To tackle this challenge, China embarked on the path of developing synthetic diamonds, and within just three years, it produced its first synthetic diamond.

However, this was only the first step. In the following decades, China's synthetic diamond industry developed rapidly.

According to Bain & Company's data, the global production of gem-quality laboratory-grown diamond rough is between 6 million and 7 million carats, with China's production capacity accounting for 50%. Among the diamonds manufactured in China, 80% come from Henan.

A phrase from the diamond industry encapsulates this:

"The world's diamonds look to China, and China's diamonds look to Henan."

Synthetic diamonds, natural diamonds, how would you choose?

Those who are confused might think that, after all, synthetic diamonds are synthetic and must differ from natural diamonds, and they are far less precious than the latter.

If you really believe that, then you are very wrong.Natural diamonds are formed under stringent conditions, and they often have minor imperfections. However, lab-grown diamonds are even more flawless than natural ones.

If we were to use lab-grown diamonds as a benchmark to judge the quality of natural diamonds, the latter would seem more like inferior goods.

Of course, neither diamond producers nor natural diamond merchants would sit idly by and watch lab-grown diamonds undermine the status of natural diamonds.

As a result, the diamond industry has started promoting that natural diamonds are rarer and more noble, while lab-grown diamonds are merely products of modern industry and are inexpensive.

However, De Beers, the world's largest diamond giant, despite claiming that natural diamonds are incomparably noble, has been quite honest in its actions:

It launched its own brand of lab-grown diamonds, Lightbox, with prices only one-tenth of those of natural diamonds.

It must be said that De Beers has made a clever move:

On the one hand, it has laid out a strategy for lab-grown diamonds, striking first to gain the upper hand. On the other hand, it has set a precedent, leaving people with the impression that lab-grown diamonds are far less valuable than natural diamonds, thus preserving the status of natural diamonds.

However, today's young people are clearly not foolish. As more and more people believe that diamonds are a "century-long scam," the diamond market has undergone a dramatic change. Whether to choose lab-grown diamonds or natural diamonds, I believe everyone has their own answer in their hearts.