1. Beyond the Brands, a Belt of Factories Making Equipment

Talk about Fujian sports goods and almost everyone names Anta, Xtep, 361 Degrees and Erke — the sportswear brands that emerged from a few square kilometres around Chendai township in Jinjiang. But to the public those names mean a pair of shoes or a set of athletic wear worn on the body, not a manufacturing category.

"Cultural, educational, arts-and-crafts, sports and recreational goods manufacturing" is a long label in the national industrial classification. It covers sports equipment, fitness machines, musical instruments, pens and stationery, teaching aids, toys and assorted recreational goods. These are not the same thing as the familiar athletic shoes and sportswear: footwear and apparel sit on the textile-and-clothing side, while what truly falls into this category are balls and protective gear, treadmills and gym machines, guitars and violins, pens and notebooks, building blocks and assembly toys — items that are messier and far less eye-catching.

Fujian is precisely a place where the "brand" easily eclipses the "manufacturing." The glow of the sportswear brands is so bright that the whole belt of factories behind them — making equipment, instruments and toys — has long gone unexamined. This report tries to move the camera away from the brands and onto the production that genuinely belongs to this category. Fujian has several clusters here of no small quality, yet they are rarely discussed seriously. One clarification first: Anxi rattan-iron, Putian arts-and-crafts and oil painting, and Xiamen eyewear — the arts-and-crafts side — are covered in a separate Fujian report and are not repeated here. This piece focuses on the sports-equipment, instrument and toy side.

2. Jinjiang: A National Sports Industry Base Grown from a Single Shoe

To discuss Fujian's sports-goods manufacturing you cannot avoid Jinjiang, but the angle needs shifting.

Jinjiang is best known as the "shoe capital of China," accounting for a substantial share of national athletic-shoe output. Yet more worth recording than the shoes is its industrial status: in 2007 Jinjiang became China's third national sports industry base, and the only county-level city among them. In recent years its sports-industry output value has surpassed 250 billion yuan, nurturing a cluster of sports enterprises including Anta, Xtep, 361 Degrees and Shuhua. Behind that figure lies a complete chain running from raw materials, shoe components and fabric to finished goods, and on to brands and event sponsorship.

Broaden the view from "shoes" to "sports-goods manufacturing" and Jinjiang's depth becomes clearer. According to Fujian's statistics authority, in 2023 the province's total sports-industry output reached about 600.8 billion yuan, roughly 4.14% of provincial GDP — sport has long ceased to be merely the earnings reports of a few listed companies and has become a province-scale industry. Jinjiang is the densest patch in that picture: tens of thousands of upstream and downstream firms, and beyond the brands, a thick web of small and medium factories making shoe materials, protective gear, athletic accessories and assorted sports goods. Most do not face consumers directly, yet they are the supporting base that lets the brands run efficiently.

The Institute starts from Jinjiang precisely because it illustrates a typical path: a county first builds scale on a single product (athletic shoes), then settles that scale into a complete industrial support system, and finally grows into the identity of brands and a national base. A large share of the quality of Fujian's sports-goods manufacturing rests on this Jinjiang chain.

3. Fitness Equipment: A Slice of Hard Manufacturing Inside the Sports Pie

If athletic shoes are the public face of Jinjiang's sports industry, fitness equipment is one of its harder cores.

The representative here is Shuhua Sports. According to public corporate records, the company was founded in Jinjiang in 1996, focuses on indoor and outdoor fitness equipment, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2020, and is one of China's leading fitness-equipment suppliers, having served as official fitness-equipment supplier for several national and international sporting events. It runs production bases in Jinjiang and the Quanzhou Taiwanese Investment Zone, with business covering many overseas countries and regions.

Fitness equipment is the classic "hard manufacturing" within this category: treadmills, strength machines and commercial gym gear involve steel forming, motors and control systems, surface treatment and assembly — its technical and capital thresholds run notably higher than ordinary small sports goods. It is not as universally known as athletic shoes, yet it marks Fujian's sports industry shifting from "light" toward "heavy." A county once famous for making shoes producing a listed fitness-equipment company shows this belt holds not only sewing and cutting but real metalworking and electromechanical assembly strength.

This hard manufacturing shares the same industrial soil as Jinjiang's sportswear brands: the same supply chain, the same industrial policy, the same pool of talent and channels versed in sports goods. Its presence keeps the map of Fujian sports-goods manufacturing from being reduced to the single label of "shoes and apparel."

4. Zhangzhou: A Small City Making a Million Guitars a Year

Move the camera from Quanzhou to Zhangzhou and another highly recognisable cluster within Fujian's cultural-sports-recreational category surfaces — musical instruments, guitars above all.

According to public reporting from China's musical-instrument industry and local media, Zhangzhou's Xiangcheng is China's third-largest guitar production base, with the instrument industry concentrated mainly around the Xiangcheng Jinfeng Development Zone. After more than thirty years of growth, the area has gathered over forty instrument-related enterprises — more than ten guitar makers, several component firms and a handful of above-scale enterprises — with annual output value of about 1.5 billion yuan and annual guitar output of roughly a million units or more, sold to Europe, the Americas, Australia and Southeast Asia. The seed of this business was sown in the 1990s, when Taiwanese guitar firms were introduced on the strength of cross-strait ties; it has since grown into a complete chain from timber and components to finished goods and export.

Musical instruments are a badly underrated form of precision light industry. A decent guitar, from timber selection, drying and shaping, to soundboard joining, lacquering, tuning and quality control, involves many intricate steps and high demands on craft and consistency — far more than the word "assembly" suggests. These Zhangzhou firms, focused on folk, classical and electric guitars, rely on craft honed over decades and familiarity with mid-to-high-end European and American markets. Province-wide, according to Fujian's commerce authority, 2024 instrument exports reached about 1.16 billion yuan, up 33.7% year on year, a record high in export value, with private enterprises the mainstay — and Zhangzhou is the heaviest note in that export curve.

5. Toys and Cultural Goods: A Hinterland Hidden in the Export Figures

Beyond sport and instruments, this category holds another large, more scattered yet equally considerable body of production: toys and assorted cultural goods.

Its scale hides in Fujian's cultural-products export data. According to the Fujian provincial government portal, in the first half of 2024 Fujian's cultural-products exports reached about 207.5 billion yuan, up 27.1% year on year, fifth nationally; of which sculpture products were about 62 billion yuan and toys about 48 billion yuan, both holding double-digit growth. The same portal reports that in the first four months of 2024 Fujian's toy exports were about 3.7 billion yuan, up 52.3% year on year. A place so often labelled a "shoes-and-apparel province" sitting near the top of the nation in cultural-goods exports shows its light-industry production goes well beyond footwear.

This hinterland is mixed and dispersed: toys span plastic, plush and educational assembly types; cultural goods span pens and stationery, teaching aids, and festive and recreational items. Most are taken on by small and medium factories — low unit prices, large batches, heavy reliance on export channels — hard to gather under one resonant label, yet genuinely propping up the bulk of Fujian's cultural-goods exports. Studying this production means looking not only at a few star firms but at the real base laid by thousands upon thousands of small factories — which is exactly what the "catch-all" nature of this category looks like.

6. Upstream and Downstream: Several Procurement Systems That Do Not Interchange

The "mixed" nature of this category means its upstream procurement also splits into several systems that hardly interchange:

  • Metal and electromechanical parts: the steel, motors, control systems and surface treatment of fitness equipment are the largest buyers in this hard manufacturing, demanding on material and precision
  • Timber and instrument materials: Zhangzhou guitars buy various timbers, soundboard blanks, strings and fittings on a steady, specialist basis, fussy about material and consistency
  • Plastics, electronics and fabrics: toys and recreational goods need plastic pellets, small electronic modules, plush fabrics and fillings in large, fragmented volumes
  • Paper and writing materials: pens, stationery and teaching aids drive steady purchasing of refills, inks, paper and assorted writing consumables
  • Packaging materials: equipment, instruments and toys are mostly fragile or display goods, with heavy demand for boxes, cushioning and display packaging
  • Specialised machinery: from metal forming, injection moulding and spraying to carving, tuning and polishing, production equipment within the category spans many crafts

These needs map respectively to Jinjiang's sports- and fitness-equipment factories, Zhangzhou's instrument makers, and the toy and stationery factories scattered elsewhere, with almost no overlap. An upstream salesperson viewing Fujian solely through the lens of "athletic shoes" easily misses the equally weighty customer groups of equipment, instruments and toys. Sales teams supplying these Fujian makers of sports equipment, fitness gear, instruments and toys can use Tianxia Gongchang to filter factory directories and decision-maker contacts along the two dimensions of region and industry for Fujian's cultural-educational-sports-recreational goods sector, turning the door-to-door guesswork across Jinjiang and Zhangzhou, across equipment, instruments and toys, into targeted, precise development.

7. A Note from the Institute

Put these pieces together and Fujian's cultural, educational, sports and recreational goods manufacturing shows its true face — a category long obscured by the halo of its brands: Jinjiang built China's third national sports industry base on a single shoe, and grew hard manufacturing such as fitness equipment within it; Zhangzhou spent more than thirty years turning a small southern-Fujian city into a guitar cluster making a million units a year; toys and cultural goods, through dispersed small and medium factories, hold up Fujian's place near the top of the nation in cultural-products exports.

The variables for this production's future lie in each slice's own question. Jinjiang's sports goods must see whether they can move from "supplying local brands" and "contract work for overseas buyers" further toward owned brands and higher-value equipment and machinery; Zhangzhou's guitars must see whether they can settle, out of export contract work, their own instrument brands and design capability rather than merely making guitars for European and American markets; toys and cultural goods, the most dispersed hinterland, must face the old problems of low unit prices, heavy homogenisation and over-reliance on export channels. All three face the same question running through Fujian's light industry — how to climb from "making it for others" to "making it for oneself."

The Institute prefers to close this way: the easiest misreading of this Fujian category is to equate it with a few sportswear brands worn on the feet. Take it apart and you find it is several unrelated, distinct-tempered manufacturing clusters stitched together — metal-and-electromechanical work as hard as fitness equipment, hand-built woodwork as fine as guitars, and plastic light industry as mixed as toys. For upstream suppliers, the first step in reading Fujian's cultural-educational-sports-recreational goods manufacturing is to accept that brand does not equal manufacturing and shoe does not equal equipment — only by engaging category by category can one catch the truly valuable slices within this underrated production.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Fujian cultural, educational, sports and recreational goods manufacturing factory directory and industry data)
  • General Administration of Sport of China: status of the Jinjiang national sports industry base (Jinjiang became China's third national sports industry base in 2007, the only county-level city, sports-industry output over 250 billion yuan, nurturing Anta, Xtep, 361 Degrees, Shuhua and others)
  • Fujian Provincial Bureau of Statistics: 2023 total sports-industry output of about 600.8 billion yuan, roughly 4.14% of provincial GDP
  • Shuhua Sports public corporate records: founded in Jinjiang in 1996, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2020, fitness-equipment supplier, official supplier for several national and international sporting events, production bases in Jinjiang and the Quanzhou Taiwanese Investment Zone
  • China Musical Instrument Association and local media reports: Zhangzhou Xiangcheng as China's third-largest guitar base, over 40 instrument enterprises around the Xiangcheng Jinfeng Development Zone, output value about 1.5 billion yuan, annual guitar output of roughly a million units or more, sold to Europe, the Americas, Australia and Southeast Asia
  • Fujian Provincial Department of Commerce: 2024 instrument exports about 1.16 billion yuan, up 33.7% year on year, a record high, with private enterprises the mainstay
  • Fujian provincial government portal: H1 2024 cultural-products exports about 207.5 billion yuan, up 27.1%, fifth nationally, sculpture products about 62 billion yuan, toys about 48 billion yuan
  • Fujian provincial government portal: first four months of 2024 toy exports about 3.7 billion yuan, up 52.3% year on year