This Day, That Year

Item from Sept 28, 1995, in China Daily: The first wristwatch manufactured by Chinese craftsmen since 1949 was auctioned for 111,000 yuan in Shanghai on Sunday.

The watch was made in 1955 by 58 craftsmen in Shanghai and it has been kept in mint condition for 40 years.

Dating back to the 1950s, the country’s watchmaking industry has improved dramatically, and is going upmarket.

Leading manufacturers like Beijing Watch Factory and Sea-gull have been working to reposition their brands into the luxury category.

Founded in 1955, Sea-gull was the first watch brand established in China and in 2010, it introduced its luxury models with prices up to 1.68 million yuan ($253,400).

In 2013, China Haidian, which owns two of the top four domestic watch brands, Ebohr and Rossini, purchased the Swiss watchmaker Corum for $91 million. The acquisition anchored Haidian’s position in the Swiss luxury watch sector, industry observers said.

In January 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released guidelines to establish globally recognized watch brands. China plans to make five of its watch brands world leaders by 2020.

China’s watch industry now accounts for 70 percent of the world’s total output, according to the China Horologe Association. Horologe is a generic term for devices such as watches or sundials that tell the time.

But with the popularity of smartphones and wearable devices, younger people are abandoning traditional timepieces.

According to the latest statistics released by consulting company International Data Corp, worldwide shipments of wearable devices are expected to reach 125.5 million this year, up 20.4 percent year-on-year. Watch shipments will reach 71.4 million.