Journal

Over the past few years, guochao — 国潮, literally "national tide" — has moved from a niche hashtag into one of the biggest forces reshaping how a generation of Chinese consumers buys jewellery. It isn't nostalgia. It's a full-scale return to heritage craft, driven by the demographic least expected to want it: Gen Z.What Guochao Actually MeansGuochao refers to domestically designed products that reinterpret traditional Chinese culture for a contemporary audience — the term applies across toys, fashion, food, and jewellery, but it gained mainstream traction as a movement starting around 2021. The core idea is simple: instead of looking to Western luxury houses for cues, a generation of Chinese designers and consumers turned back toward their own visual and craft history, and started asking it to feel modern.Old Techniques, New DemandWhat sets guochao jewellery apart from a generic "China chic" label is that the craftsmanship is real, not decorative shorthand. Cloisonné enamelwork, which dates to the Yuan dynasty, and filigree inlay, with a documented history of more than 2,000 years, are being folded back into contemporary pieces — not as museum techniques, but as things young buyers actively seek out. The demand isn't for plain investment gold anymore; it's for gold made using methods with a real lineage behind them.The Numbers Behind the TrendThis isn't a small shift. In 2025, exports of Chinese intangible-cultural-heritage handicrafts — a category that includes jewellery made with traditional techniques — reached USD 18.7 billion, with guochao jewellery accounting for 37% of that total. An Ipsos consumer survey found that 91% of Chinese respondents prefer jewellery incorporating traditional Chinese cultural elements, and 77% said they specifically wear gold jewellery for important occasions. Laopu Gold, a jeweller built almost entirely around heritage design and craft, listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2024; by January 2026 its share price had risen roughly 800%.Voices From the TradeThe people making and selling this jewellery describe the same shift from the inside. Xu Gaoming, founder of Laopu Gold, told shareholders in April that "the brand has always sought to both preserve tradition and rebel against tradition" — heritage technique in service of a design that still feels current rather than costume. Alan Chan, Chief Brand Officer of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, has pointed to the same pattern among younger buyers: a growing appetite for gold made with traditional technique, and a specific preference for pieces that visibly showcase Chinese culture rather than generic gold. Chow Tai Fook's own managing director, Chan Sai-Cheong, has framed it as a matter of loyalty as much as taste — a younger generation now choosing domestic brands over the foreign names that once carried more prestige.On the jade side, Shanghai-based designer Eunice Zhang describes a similarly bottom-heavy market: younger buyers arriving in volume for lower-priced pieces, rather than the smaller pool of expensive, collector-grade stones that defined the category for their parents' generation. Ren Jin, a jewellery designer with more than three decades in the craft, works from the same well — gold's long-standing cultural weight in Chinese tradition — that guochao has brought back into fashion.Jade's Unlikely ComebackJade is the clearest example of the shift in taste. For years it read as a stone for an older generation — pendants and bracelets carved with Buddhas or dragons, worn more out of family obligation than personal style. Gen Z buyers are reviving it on their own terms: lighter tones, simpler cuts, designs that let the stone's natural texture do the talking instead of dense traditional carving. Surveys across mainland China and Hong Kong found that roughly 90% of jade wearers say the stone positively affects their sense of wellbeing, and about three-quarters cite its natural beauty and connection to heritage — not superstition or obligation — as the reason they wear it.Why It's Travelling Beyond ChinaGuochao's reach is no longer contained within China's borders. What used to carry a "made in China" label as a cost signal is increasingly read instead as heritage craft — filigree, enamel, and jade carving positioned the way European ateliers position centuries-old techniques.The Same Instinct, Closer to HomeGuochao itself is a mainland Chinese term, but the underlying instinct — heritage motifs reworked for a contemporary audience — shows up on Malaysian shelves too. Poh Kong, Malaysia's largest jewellery retailer since 1976, runs in-house lines built on exactly this premise: Happy Love, its oriental-inspired design collection, and The Art of Auspicious Jewellery, built around feng shui symbolism for luck and longevity. None of it is marketed locally as "guochao," but the design logic is the same one driving the trend in China — heritage read as craft and identity, not simply as decoration for an older generation. It's also why gold sales climb every year in the run-up to Chinese New Year here: for Chinese Malaysian families, buying gold isn't just a purchase, it's still understood as passing on luck. For a brand like ours, built around jade, pearl, and Chinese motifs from the start, it's less a trend to chase than a wider audience finally catching up to what these materials and techniques were always worth.