I. Why Anhui's Paper Industry Deserves Attention

Anhui occupies a distinctive position on China's papermaking map. It is neither the province with the largest output of industrial paper nor the most prominent region for integrated pulp-paper forestry. Yet one product secures Anhui an irreplaceable spot in the national industry landscape: Xuan paper. Alongside this artisanal heritage, industrial packaging paper capacity has been accumulating rapidly around Suzhou city, creating a fundamentally different industrial logic. These two trajectories evolving in parallel define how Anhui's paper sector should be understood.

II. Xuan Paper: A Thousand-Year Craft Locked to Its Geography

Xuan paper's geographic protection is precisely bounded to the administrative area of Jing County, Xuancheng City. In 2002, China's national quality regulator established product-of-origin protection for Xuan paper; in 2005 the designation was upgraded to a geographic indication protected product; in 2006, the traditional craftsmanship was included in China's first batch of national intangible cultural heritage; and in 2009, UNESCO listed it as a Representative Element of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Each layer of recognition validates the craft itself and, simultaneously, raises a legally grounded barrier around Jing County as the sole place of production.

Raw Material and Geographic Dependency

Xuan paper is made primarily from the bark of green sandalwood (Pteroceltis tatarinowii) trees and sand-field rice straw, both sourced from Jing County and its immediate surroundings. Production involves more than one hundred traditional handcraft steps, with a total cycle exceeding two years. This profound dependence on locally specific raw materials and climate conditions means Xuan paper cannot be industrially replicated elsewhere.

Industry Scale

As of 2023, Jing County hosts four above-scale Xuan paper enterprises, plus approximately 520 book-painting paper makers and individual workshops. Annual output stands at roughly 400 tonnes of Xuan paper — covering 100% of domestic market demand — and around 20,000 tonnes of book-painting paper, representing about 60% of the domestic market. Combined annual sales of Xuan paper and book-painting paper reached 630 million yuan, with some 7,000 people employed in the sector.

China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd. ("Red Star" brand) is the dominant enterprise: roughly 1,000 employees, a factory site of approximately 3 square kilometres, annual Xuan paper capacity of about 500 tonnes, accounting for around 80% of national Xuan paper output. The company's annual output value is approximately 200 million yuan, with annual tax and profit of around 60 million yuan.

Dingjiaiqao Town: The Book-Painting Paper Cluster

While Xuan paper occupies the high end, Dingjiaiqao Town in Jing County has coalesced into a volume-oriented cluster for machine-made book-painting paper. By end-2023, the town counted 239 Xuan and book-painting paper production enterprises, with over 5,000 employees and annual sales exceeding 1.3 billion yuan. Products reach domestic markets as well as Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America.

Provincial authorities have set an ambitious target: within five years, the primary production area should achieve an industry scale of 7.5 billion yuan, with the broader segment surpassing 10 billion yuan.

III. Industrial Packaging Paper: The Machine-Made Route in Suzhou and Ma'anshan

Anhui's industrial packaging paper sector is defined by two regions with distinct development logics.

Suzhou: Large-Scale Capacity

Shanying International is one of China's largest industrial packaging paper producers. Its Suzhou-Shanying project represents one of the company's biggest strategic investments — total planned investment of approximately 26 billion yuan, covering about 2,500 mu of land, targeting 1.2 million tonnes per year of pulp production and 3.6 million tonnes per year of packaging paper capacity, making it a pivotal hub in Shanying's East China layout.

Locally headquartered Linping Development (Suzhou city, Xiaoxian County Circular Economy Industrial Park) focuses on corrugated base paper and containerboard, operating a closed-loop model of "waste paper recovery — combined heat and power — green papermaking." Its downstream products enter logistics, industrial goods, and consumer packaging, with long-term strategic partnerships established with Shanying International, Hexing Packaging, and other listed companies.

Ma'anshan: Historical Legacy and Transition

The predecessor of Shanying International's Ma'anshan base dates to 1957, making it one of Anhui's oldest industrial paper enterprises. After a 1999 restructuring, it was absorbed into the Shanying network. The Ma'anshan base has long specialised in containerboard and corrugating medium, and remains one of the province's largest packaging paperboard production centres.

IV. Supply Chain Structure: The Two-Track Divide

Xuan Paper's Enclosed Chain

Xuan paper's upstream is intensely localised: green sandalwood bark is sourced from mountain areas around Jing County; sand-field rice straw comes from local agriculture; initial processing — retting, steaming, bleaching — is concentrated near the origin. Substitute raw materials from elsewhere are effectively impossible. Downstream buyers include art supply retailers, calligraphy and painting dealers, museums, and cultural institutions, with auction houses occasionally absorbing premium sheets. The chain is short and enclosed, entirely dependent on the continuity of skilled craftspeople.

Industrial Packaging Paper Chain

Machine-made packaging paper in Suzhou and Ma'anshan relies primarily on recycled waste paper (the foundation of Linping Development's circular model), supplemented by purchased wood pulp. Downstream demand flows through corrugated box manufacturers and logistics packaging buyers, ultimately serving e-commerce, fast-moving consumer goods, and industrial export sectors. As e-commerce logistics continue to expand, the structural demand underpinning this downstream chain remains relatively firm.

V. Challenges and Transition Observations

For the Xuan paper segment, the core tension is the aging of craft practitioners. The combined physical and technical demands of handmade Xuan paper persistently deter younger entrants, and the two-year, hundred-plus-step process cannot be mechanised away. Government investment in practitioner certification and intangible heritage subsidies has been sustained, but capacity expansion remains essentially constrained by the available pool of skilled artisans. Book-painting paper price competition also creates pressure on Xuan paper's premium positioning — though in practice the two product tiers serve substantially different buyer groups.

Industrial packaging paper faces cyclical overcapacity risk. As very large-scale projects like Suzhou-Shanying come online, any phase of industry-wide supply-demand imbalance will compress pricing. Linping Development's circular model partially buffers raw material cost volatility, but solid waste disposal and environmental compliance thresholds are rising in parallel.

For sales teams serving upstream suppliers — papermaking equipment, chemical additives, waste paper recovery, or packaging materials — Tianxia Gongchang provides a dual-dimensional search by region and industry to identify Anhui paper and paper products factory directories and decision-maker contact information for targeted outreach.

VI. Research Institute Assessment

The structural bifurcation of Anhui's paper industry reflects a broader dynamic across Chinese papermaking: the artisanal heritage segment commands distinctive brand premium but faces a hard capacity ceiling set by craft transmission; the industrial packaging segment is rapidly consolidating under capital and scale logic, with competition shifting to waste paper procurement cost, co-generation efficiency, and environmental compliance capability. The two tracks coexist within a single province without direct head-to-head competition, yet they do compete for policy resources and local government attention. How Anhui reconciles "a thousand years of Xuan paper" with "million-tonne industrial capacity" into a coherent provincial narrative remains an open question for the industry's external positioning.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Anhui paper and paper products factory directory and industry data)
  • Xinhua News Agency Anhui Channel, "Jing County Xuan Paper: Writing a New Chapter with Innovation" (March 2024)
  • Xuancheng Municipal Government official site, "Jing County Xuan Paper: A Thousand-Year National Treasure"
  • Jing County People's Government, "A Brief History of Xuan Paper Development" and "Research Report on Jing County Xuan Paper and Book-Painting Paper Industry"
  • China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network, Xuan Paper Traditional Craftsmanship Special Topic
  • Shanying International Holdings Co., Ltd., 2024 Annual Report (Shanghai Stock Exchange disclosure)
  • Linping Development prospectus and Shanghai Securities News coverage (January–February 2026)
  • Anhui Provincial Government and Xuancheng Economic and Information Bureau Xuan paper industry planning documents