Inland county shines a spotlight on global beauty industry

ZHENGZHOU -- Chen Yinli from Luyi County, central China's Henan Province, always feels lucky to indulge her passion for makeup and beauty in her way of making a living.

Chen works in the business of turning raw wool into exquisite makeup brushes for renowned cosmetics brands. The county where she lives and works produces over 80 percent of China's total cosmetic brushes for clients from over 20 countries.

"The human desire to look attractive is universal," said Chen. "The large makeup brush is used to apply foundation, the medium one is for blush, and the small one for eyeshadow," she explained.

Chen said the company she works for has established long-term partnership with international brands, including Chanel and L'Oréal.

However, back in the 1970s, most of the households in the inland county made a living by raising sheep, and much of the raw wool from the slaughtered sheep were discarded as villagers considered it useless.

Local officials and farmers were encouraged to open workshops to process and sell the cast-off after learning from those who worked outside their hometown in foreign trade businesses that processed wool could fetch a price as high as that of sheep.

Following the reform and opening-up policy in late 1970s, investment from Japan and the Republic of Korea poured into China's coastal areas, which drove several farmers in Luyi to seek opportunities there with the profits they earned from opening workshops.

They set up contract companies in cities including Shenzhen, Dongguan, Yiwu, and Ningbo, producing cosmetics brushes for dozens of international brands.

However, due to the rising land and labor prices, some labor-intensive industries gradually relocated from coastal areas to inland provinces and cities.

Since 2015, the makeup brush production lines that scattered across the eastern provinces began to return to Luyi.

"We moved our production base to Luyi, but we still keep an office in Shenzhen to handle international orders and receive customers from all over the world," said Liang Qingzhi, who is among the earliest businessmen from the county that returned to their hometown to continue operation.

The local county government also launched a program and rolled out favorable policies to attract entrepreneurs to return and set up an industrial park that covers over 67 hectares.

According to official data, the park has gathered about 140 companies with a combined capacity of 150 million sets of cosmetic brushes yearly. It generates a gross annual output value of 3.5 billion yuan (about 541 million U.S. dollars).

The flourishing business has created jobs for nearly 70,000 people who used to seek better opportunities in more developed coastal areas in east China.

Moreover, the local government is promoting contract companies to run their own brands with intellectual property rights, introducing measures such as formulating local high standards of producing cosmetic brushes.

The business of makeup brushes is making its own contribution to the country's rural vitalization endeavors, said Li Gang, Party chief of Luyi.