Which City in China Makes What: Product-by-Product Sourcing Index

Chinese manufacturing is geographic. For most consumer products there is one town, district or county that makes a third, a half or more of the country's output, with the component suppliers, mould shops, packaging printers and freight forwarders for that product gathered around it. Buyers who know the cluster go straight to factories and pay factory prices; buyers who search a marketplace by product name land on traders in Shanghai and Shenzhen who buy from the cluster and add a margin. This index lists the clusters by product, alphabetically, and links each to the wiki's cluster page with figures, ports, fairs and markets. For the regional overview and how clusters form, read China manufacturing hubs: which city makes what first.

How to use the index#

1. Find your product in the table.
2. Open the cluster page for the city and the market page if one exists.
3. Search 1688 and Alibaba with the city name in the query, or filter the Canton Fair exhibitor list by that city.
4. If the order justifies it, plan a visit around the cluster's own fair; the cluster page shows the next one.

Product index, A to Z#

Sixty categories, thirty-two clusters. Each cluster page shows sourced figures (output share, number of firms, export value where published), the nearest ports with typical ocean transit, the wholesale markets in the cluster and the fairs that serve it.

Reading the pattern#

Zhejiang makes the small things. Hardware, socks, pearls, eyewear, leather, moulds, appliances, chairs, pens: the province's specialised towns cover most of the consumer-goods catalogue, all within two hours of Yiwu and Ningbo port. A buyer of mixed household goods can cover five clusters in a week from a base in Yiwu.

Guangdong makes the complex and the fashionable. Electronics, lighting, furniture, toys, ceramics, cosmetics, garments and bags cluster across the Pearl River Delta, within an hour or two of Guangzhou and Shenzhen and their ports. The Canton Fair is the natural meeting point.

Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hebei each own a few categories outright. Sports shoes and stone in Fujian, optics and bridal in Jiangsu, appliances, wigs and plywood in Shandong, bags and kids' bikes in Hebei. These clusters are farther from the main fairs and have fewer English-speaking traders, which is exactly why factory prices there are lower.

Yiwu is the market, not the maker. Yiwu International Trade City sells what the clusters produce, in small quantities, from 75,000 booths. For a mixed first order it beats visiting five clusters; for a single-product container, go to the cluster.

Common mistakes#

• Searching "China manufacturer" plus product and buying from the first page of a marketplace: the top results are often traders in big cities, not cluster factories.
• Visiting only Guangzhou and Shenzhen for a product made in Zhejiang or Fujian, and paying a Guangdong trading company's margin.
• Assuming the cluster is the only source. Clusters shift (electronics assembly has moved partly to Vietnam, some garments to Southeast Asia) and large brands' suppliers are often elsewhere. Use the index as a starting point and verify each factory as in factory vs trading company.

The index is maintained from the wiki's cluster directory; when a cluster page is added or updated, the table is refreshed. Last review: October 2026.