Who Decides What Is Real?
How a replaceable mining town in Jiangxi became the national authority that judges every ceramic product sold in China.
Try to find Pingxiang on a map.
You won’t find it in the coastal megacity belt. You won’t find it on the high speed rail map that connects China’s economic engines. You won’t find it in the business pages of any international newspaper.
It is an inland industrial city in Jiangxi province. Coal mining. Ceramics. Manufacturing.
The kind of place you drive through. The kind of place that, if it disappeared from China’s economic geography, most people would not notice.
And yet.
Somewhere in this unremarkable city, a decision is made that affects every ceramic product sold in China. A test is performed. A standard is applied. A seal is issued or withheld.
Manufacturers across the country send their products to Pingxiang; not to buy, not to sell, but to be judged.
How did a replaceable mining town become the gatekeeper for an entire industry?
That is the question this article will answer.
What Everyone Thinks the City Is
The Surface
There are two Pingxiangs.
One sits on the Vietnam border in Guangxi; a logistics gateway, a smart port, a city whose geography explains its existence.1 This is the Pingxiang that makes sense. The one that appears in trade reports, infrastructure plans and high speed rail maps.2
The other sits inland in Jiangxi. No border. No gateway. No international corridor. This is the Pingxiang that makes no sense.
The visible economy, the Jiangxi Pingxiang is an industrial city. Its streets are lined with ceramics factories. Its history is built on coal mining. Its economy is production components for heavy industry, wear resistant materials, alumina ceramics.
If you were to visit this city, what you will see is factory clusters producing industrial ceramics. trucks carrying raw materials and finished goods. A workforce trained in manufacturing, not services and a city that looks like a hundred other Chinese industrial towns.
Pingxiang covers approximately 3,824 square kilometers.3 Its population is around 1.8 million.4 The city’s built up urban area is relatively compact at 18 square kilometers.5
In 1995, Jiangxi province’s GDP per capita was 2,949 yuan; well below the national average.6 By 2001, Pingxiang’s per capita GDP was just 6,224 yuan.7 As late as 2024, the city’s GDP per capita reached 67,327 yuan; still below the national average of 95,493 yuan.8
The Asian Development Bank describes Pingxiang as a poverty stricken, resource depleted, mountainous city that has lagged significantly behind national averages one of 12 cities nationwide chosen to showcase industrial transformation from resource extraction to diversification.9
At face value, Pingxiang is a manufacturing city in an inland province. It competes on cost. It is vulnerable to relocation. It is replaceable.
This assessment is wrong. But to understand why, we need to look past the surface. past the factories, past the coal mines, past the assumption that Pingxiang is just another industrial town.
Why the City Existed. What Job It Originally Performed.
The Original Logic
Pingxiang’s original function was not ceramics. It was coal.
The city sits on the border of Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, in the midst of the Wugong Mountains on the upper course of the Lu River, a position that has always made it a major route between Changsha and Nanchang.10 A county was established there in 267 CE, but Pingxiang’s modern importance began much later, with a discovery that would shape its identity for more than a century.
Rich coal deposits were found at the end of the 19th century by German experts employed by the Hanyang Iron Works in Hubei province, which was urgently seeking a source of coking coal.11 The court decided that Pingxiang’s mines were essential for industrialization. Foreign engineers and Chinese officials arrived to establish the new social and economic order required for mechanized mining.12
Fuel for China’s industrialization was the original logic for this city. A railway was built during 1903–05 to transport the coal, and coke ovens were installed in the city.13
The transformation was violent. Outsiders constructed a Westernized factory town that sat uneasily within the existing community. Mistreatment of the local population, including the forced purchase of gentry held properties and the integration of peasants into factory style labor schemes sparked a series of rebellions that wounded the empire and tore at the fabric of the community.14
State appointed merchants arrived with state funds and state power to buy up the coalfields and replace them with a unified coalmining system that could utilize Western technology for dramatically increased output. In so doing, they undermined the power of elite families that had previously ruled the region, all in the interests of the state.15
The city’s job was to extract and ship.
Coal was the reason Pingxiang existed. It was a production node in an industrial supply chain; fuel for the Hanyang Iron Works, fuel for the railways, fuel for China’s halting industrialization.
The ceramics industry: a secondary layer.
Ceramics emerged alongside coal. Industrial ceramics; refractory materials for kilns, abrasives for grinding, components for heavy industry were a natural adjunct. The raw materials were available. The coal fired kilns were already there. The industrial logic made sense.
The industrial ceramics industry in Pingxiang’s Xiangdong District traces its roots to the 1960s, but it expanded dramatically after 2006, when the Pingxiang Ceramic Industrial Base was established with a planned area of 21.5 square kilometers.16 By 2009, Xiangdong District had been awarded the title China’s Industrial Ceramics Capital.17
This was a manufacturing economy. Replaceable by design. Pingxiang was replaceable. Coal is fungible. Ceramics are fungible. Labor is fungible. Any city with rail access and a workforce could do what Pingxiang did.
The city had no control over the chain. It could be bypassed. It could be undercut. It could be abandoned.
Pingxiang was a production node, not a control point. Its fate was determined by forces outside its borders: demand for coal, the health of the iron industry, the direction of national industrial policy.
And then the break came.
How do you make a factory city immovable?
Why That Stopped Working.
The Break
Every city has a break. For Pingxiang, the break was not sudden. It was slow, geological and inevitable.
The resource that built the city was running out.
Pingxiang was founded on coal. For more than a century, its identity was inseparable from the black gold beneath its soil. The city carried the title Jiangnan Coal Capital the coal heart of southern China.18
But coal mining has a shelf life. And Pingxiang’s shelf was nearly empty.
Two breaks, one city.
The First Break: Resource Depletion
After more than 120 years of large scale mining, Pingxiang’s coal resources were effectively exhausted.19 What remained was increasingly difficult and expensive to extract. High quality coal had become scarce. The remaining seams were thin, deep, and uneconomical.20
The numbers told the story. In the Anyuan District, the historic core of Pingxiang’s coal industry; coal resources based industrial land declined by 34.37 percent between 2008 and 2013 alone.21 By 2025, only 22 coal mines remained in the entire city.22
A 2025 academic study concluded that coal mining in Pingxiang would cease entirely within the next 15 years.23
The Second Break: The National Policy Shift
Even if the coal had lasted, the policy environment was turning against it.
China’s dual carbon goals; peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 made coal the enemy. The national energy strategy was shifting away from the very fuel that had built Pingxiang.24
In 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission issued a policy requiring the closure of coal mines with annual production below 300,000 tons.25 Pingxiang’s mines were predominantly small scale operations, ill equipped to survive the consolidation. In 2020, Jiangxi province mandated further closures of all 90,000 ton and below mines.26
The state had made its decision: coal was no longer the future.
The Collapse
The combined force of resource exhaustion and policy pressure triggered an accelerated collapse.
By 2025, Pingxiang’s remaining 22 mines were being closed one by one. The municipal government announced the closure of three major mines; Wubei, Wangkeng and Panjiachong Xinfeng as part of a citywide coal exit strategy.27 All township level coal mines in Pingxiang were scheduled for complete closure in 2025.28
One official commentary captured the existential shift:
We must acknowledge the important role coal has played in Pingxiang’s history. But we cannot delude ourselves into thinking we can continue to lie in the glory of coal mining. We should not have the fear that ‘without coal, Pingxiang has no future.’ 29
The break was complete.
The city faced a choice. It could resist the inevitable, clinging to a dying industry. Or it could accept that its foundation had crumbled and search for a new one.
Pingxiang chose to search. But what it found was not what anyone expected.
What Problem the City Was Trying to Solve.
The Search
Cities don’t magically discover assets. They are searching.
By 2007, Pingxiang’s coal reserves were clearly depleting.30 The city had entered what scholars describe as its forced transformation phase an existential reckoning with the end of its foundational industry.31
The search had begun.
The problem Pingxiang was trying to solve was How do you replace the industry that built you?
The city had two obvious paths forward. Neither seemed to work.
Neo-industrialization
The first model was to modernize what already existed; upgrade coal mining with digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and better efficiency. Extend the value chain by adding more processing stages; keep the industrial base alive through modernization.32
But this required significant capital. And the resource was already depleted. You cannot modernize what is not there.
New Industries
The second model was to abandon coal entirely and build something new. This was the path taken by Manchester, Bilbao and other Western industrial cities. It required grants, small business development, and a complete structural shift.33
But Pingxiang’s industrial structure was deeply undiversified. Heavy industry had been prioritized for decades at the expense of light industry and services.34 The city had not built the institutional infrastructure for a clean break.
The constraints were severe.
A 2012 study of Pingxiang’s transition found that while the city had made economic progress, its industrial structure remained deeply unbalanced; a heavy dependence on mining, a secondary industry share that was too large, a tertiary sector that was too small. Its heavy dependence on resources and investment, the study concluded, does not suggest a fundamental change in development modes.35
The search was not going well.
Then the city discovered something it already had.
While Pingxiang’s leaders were looking for new industries to replace coal, they began to notice something strange. The ceramics industry, which had always been a secondary activity was not just surviving. It was thriving.
Ceramics in Pingxiang traced back to the 1960s.36 By the 1970s, Xiangdong District’s chemical ceramic products had captured over 70 percent of the domestic market share.37
What Pingxiang had was a cluster; factories, supply chains, trained workers, institutional memory. The province had already designated Pingxiang a provincial ceramic industry base.38
Pingxiang could not compete on cost. But it could compete on infrastructure.
The search for new industry was giving way to something else: a search for control. Pingxiang was beginning to realize that the answer was not to find a new product, but to find a new position.
And then, in 2006, something happened that would change everything.39
Jurisdictional differentiation. What if Pingxiang became the place that defines quality, rather than the place that produces it?
The Moment Somebody Realized We’ve Been Looking at This Wrong.
The Recognition
This is the emotional climax. Not the investment. Not the policy. Not the infrastructure.
Recognition.
The state had already decided.
In 2006, the National Quality Supervision and Inspection General Administration issued a formal approval: the National Ceramic Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Jiangxi) would be established.40
The center would be built on an existing foundation. There was the National Daily Use Ceramics Quality Supervision and Inspection Center in Jingdezhen. There was the Architectural Ceramics Engineering Research Center Analysis and Testing Center. And there was something else. Something in Pingxiang.41
The Jiangxi Industrial Ceramics Quality Supervision and Inspection Station.
This was the seed. It had been established in 1998 at 618 Jianshe East Road in Anyuan District, with 28 personnel and 199 pieces of testing equipment valued at 15 million yuan.42 By 2006, it had been operating for eight years. It had institutional memory. It had a relationship with the state. It had credibility.
In December 2006, the center passed the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) expert review for metrology accreditation, inspection and approval and laboratory three in one evaluation.43
It became Pingxiang’s first national level quality inspection center.44
Pingxiang was not chosen because it was the best ceramics manufacturer. Pingxiang was chosen because it already had the institution. The state did not need Pingxiang to make better ceramics. It needed Pingxiang to judge them.
A different recognition was happening at the same time; inside the city.
Pingxiang’s ceramics industry had been growing for decades. In Xiangdong District, industrial ceramics originated in the 1960s and began expanding in the 1970s.45 In 2006, the district had 174 ceramics enterprises employing 23,000 people.46 Annual output reached 400,000 tons, with total production value exceeding one billion yuan.47 Industrial ceramics products commanded more than 70 percent of the domestic market share, with exports reaching over 20 countries and regions including Europe, America and Japan.
By 2006, Pingxiang already had the industry. It already had the cluster. It already had the market share.
What it lacked was something else. Something that would make the industry permanent.
The city and the state arrived at the same recognition, from different directions.
The state recognized that Pingxiang had the institutional infrastructure to host a national standard authority.
The city recognized that hosting that authority would make its industry irreplaceable.
The recognition was this:
Pingxiang does not need to win the market. Pingxiang needs to be the referee. The referee is never replaced.
In 2007, the center received its official authorization and was registered as an independent public institution legal entity.48 The National Ceramic Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Jiangxi) was operational.49
It had a footprint of 6,500 square meters, 28 personnel, 199 instruments and 15 million yuan in equipment.50
The seal was about to be issued and it would be issued in Pingxiang.
“We don’t need to win the market. We need to be the referee. The referee is never replaced.”
How They Transformed Recognition into Reality.
The Build
Recognition without execution is fantasy. Pingxiang executed.
Two builds, synchronized.
In 2006, the National Quality Supervision and Inspection General Administration approved the establishment of the National Ceramic Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Jiangxi).51 The center was assembled from three existing institutions; including the Jiangxi Industrial Ceramics Quality Supervision and Inspection Station, which had been operating in Pingxiang since 1998.52
Pingxiang already had the institutional seed. The state simply upgraded it.
That same year, Pingxiang broke ground on a 21.5 square kilometer ceramics industrial base in Xiangdong District.53 By 2007, the provincial government had designated it the provincial industrial ceramics base.54 By 2009, Xiangdong District had been awarded the title China’s Industrial Ceramics Capital.55
The logic was mutual reinforcement. The National Center gave Pingxiang’s ceramics industry something no other ceramics cluster could claim: a state designated standard authority physically located within it.
The industrial base gave the National Center something it needed: a living cluster of manufacturers to test, certify and regulate.
The build was complete. Not because Pingxiang had built a factory. Because Pingxiang had built the infrastructure that made its factories irreplaceable.
How This System Reproduces Itself.
The Machine
This is where value actually flows. Not through manufacturing. Through jurisdiction.
The revenue streams are structural
Every ceramic product sold in China must be tested against the standard written in Pingxiang. Every manufacturer must submit to the test performed in Pingxiang. Every dispute over quality is resolved by the authority housed in Pingxiang.56
The center charges for certification, for testing, for compliance, for arbitration. The fees are not market prices; they are state authorized tolls.
The center employs 28 specialists in ceramics testing, standards development, and metrology.57 These are not factory workers. They are the people who write the rules. They train the next generation of standard setters. Talent clusters around the authority. Pingxiang becomes the knowledge node; not for making ceramics, but for judging them.
There are 199 pieces of testing equipment valued at 15 million yuan, and a footprint of 6,500 square meters.58 It is self sustaining. And it is compounding. In 2025, the center issued a ¥3.26 million procurement for new testing equipment.59 This is not maintenance. This is expansion. The center justifies reinvestment through its national role. Policy reinforces the center’s position. The state has a vested interest in maintaining the center’s authority.
Feedback Loops
More manufacturers → more testing revenue → more capability investment → more authority → more manufacturers. Higher standards → more complex testing → more specialization → higher barriers to entry → more authority.
Each loop reinforces the center’s indispensability.
Manufacturers cannot bypass Pingxiang, they must submit to its tests. The state cannot relocate the center too much infrastructure, personnel, precedent. Competitors cannot replicate the center, it is a state designated monopoly.
The machine produces sovereignty.
What Now Makes the City Difficult to Replace? Not Successful. Necessary.
The Moat
Pingxiang’s moat is not economic. It is jurisdictional.
The center is physically embedded in Pingxiang. Its infrastructure, personnel and administrative precedent are locked in place. Relocating it would require dismantling what the state has already built and there is no justification for doing so. The state designated Pingxiang as the national authority. That designation cannot be undone without an act of the state, and the state has no reason to act against itself.
The industrial cluster is locked to the center. Pingxiang ceramics command more than 70 percent of the domestic market for chemical ceramic products. The Xiangdong industrial ceramics base had 120 registered industrial enterprises with annual revenue exceeding 15.9 billion yuan by 2024. The cluster exists because the center exists. The center exists because the cluster exists. This is mutual reinforcement, not a connection that can be broken.
And then there is the deepest lock. The National Ceramic Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center is split between two cities: the headquarters in Jingdezhen and the industrial ceramics testing arm in Pingxiang. Jingdezhen is the Porcelain Capital. The state cannot move the center out of Jingdezhen without losing its cultural legitimacy. Pingxiang cannot lose the center because it is the designated industrial ceramics node; jurisdictionally locked in by its own certification authority and the state’s deliberate architecture. The center is permanently split between two cities, each with a different claim to its authority: Jingdezhen’s cultural capital and Pingxiang’s industrial jurisdiction.
Pingxiang is not the best ceramics manufacturer. Pingxiang is the only ceramics judge. And the judge cannot be relocated, un-designated, or dislodged.
Pingxiang is not the best ceramics manufacturer. Pingxiang is the only ceramics judge.
The Standard Sovereign Principle
Forge irreplaceability not by making the best product, but by housing the institutional authority that defines what “best” means. The factory is fungible. The seal is sovereign.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE STANDARD SOVEREIGN │
│ │
│ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ THE MARKET │────▶│ PINGXIANG (GATEKEEPER)│ │
│ │ (Ceramics) │ │ National Center │ │
│ └─────────────┘ │ - Drafts standards │ │
│ │ - Tests products │ │
│ │ - Issues certification │ │
│ │ - Arbitrates disputes │ │
│ └─────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ SOVEREIGNTY │ │
│ │ Irreplaceable │ │
│ └─────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘A city that writes the standard owns the market because every unit sold anywhere must first pass through the gate it controls.
Where Else Can This Work? China Disappears. The Principle Survives.
The Blueprint
The principle is transferable.
It is not about ceramics. It is not about Pingxiang. It is about institutional capture.
What industry in your territory lacks a national standard and could you host the authority that writes it?
The strategy:
Identify a category where quality certification matters
Position your city as the logical home for the standard authority
Secure state designation not market share
Build the institutional infrastructure before the market demands it
Lock in through infrastructure, personnel and precedent
Reinvest to compound the capability gap
Let the market come to you
This applies to any industrial category with quality differentiation, any sector with national standards gaps and any city with state alignment and patience.
There are other cities we have already covered .
Shunde: Market driven collective standards different model, different principle.
Lishui: Originated standard from ecological mandate similar principle, different source.
Pingxiang: State designated standard authority the purest form.
Do not compete on production. Compete on jurisdiction. Seek state designation not market share. Build the institutional infrastructure before the market demands it. Let the market come to you.
Where Pingxiang Sits in the Fortress
Position in the Fortress
Pingxiang belongs to Family X Certification Sovereignty. The core question of this family is Who decides what is real?
Pingxiang answers: The state appointed national authority decides. And that authority sits in Pingxiang.
FAMILY X: CERTIFICATION SOVEREIGNTY
Who decides what is real?
Control over standards often matters more than control over production. Certification Sovereignty studies the institutions that define authenticity, legitimacy and quality.
Cities
Yancheng: The Seal Becomes the Product
Zibo: Codify the Craft
Shigatse: Authentication Sovereignty
Lishui: Build the Standard
Foshan (Shunde): Write the Rulebook
Cangzhou: The Irreplaceable Law
Pingxiang: Authority is state designated and jurisdictional.
This family increasingly demonstrates that defining the rules can become a stronger advantage than competing within them.
Pingxiang deepens Family X by introducing a mechanism none of the others possess: state embedded certification.
Shunde’s authority is collective; market driven, emergent from the cluster itself. Lishui’s authority is ecological; born from constraint, self originated. Yancheng’s authority is third party; a seal borrowed from an external certifier. Zibo’s authority is craft based codified knowledge.
Pingxiang’s authority is state designated and jurisdictional.
The National Ceramic Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center was planted by the state. Its authority does not depend on market consensus, ecological mandate, or craft tradition. It depends on state designation. And that designation cannot be relocated.
What Pingxiang Adds to Family X
Before Pingxiang, Family X main issue was Write the rulebook. Control the seal. Become the authority.
Pingxiang teaches us that The state can grant you the seal. That grant is permanent, because the state cannot relocate the infrastructure it has already built.
This is not a new family. It is a deepening of the doctrine.
Certification sovereignty can be achieved through multiple mechanisms:
Market consensus (Shunde)
Ecological mandate (Lishui)
Craft codification (Zibo)
Third party certification (Yancheng)
Spiritual lineage (Shigatse)
Irreplaceable asset protection (Cangzhou)
State designation (Pingxiang)
Pingxiang’s mechanism is the most durable because it does not depend on market forces, ecological conditions, or craft traditions. It depends on the state and the state does not relocate what it has built.
The City That Wrote the Rules
Conclusion
The story of Pingxiang is not about ceramics. It is about the nature of irreplaceability.
Most cities try to become irreplaceable by making something better. They compete on quality. They compete on cost. They compete on innovation. But competition is a race that never ends.
Pingxiang took a different path. It did not try to be the best manufacturer. It became the institution that defines what best means.
This is the distinction that matters.
The manufacturer is replaceable. The judge is not.
The factory can be undercut. The seal cannot be relocated.
The product can be copied. The institution cannot be replicated.
Pingxiang understood that sovereignty does not come from winning the market. It comes from governing the market. It comes from becoming the referee, not the player. It comes from housing the authority that defines legitimacy.
Find the industry where your city can be the judge, not just another competitor. Secure the authority to define what is real. Lock it in. Reinvest in it. Let the market come to you.
The factory is fungible.
The seal is sovereign.
Next Week: Tonghua
Pingxiang escaped replaceability not by making a better product, but by housing the institutional authority that defines what better means.
Next week, we travel north.
To Jilin province. To the border with North Korea. To a city that sits at the edge of something.
Tonghua.
It is known for ginseng. For the root that grows in the Changbai Mountains, traded across Asia for centuries.
But there is something else. Something we have not yet seen in the Fortress.
Something that does not fit neatly into any of the families we have explored so far.
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I continue to admire China’s commitment to carbon neutrality. This is the theme that has run through many of your pieces. And seems to have governed many of the choices that have been made for these cities.
Fascinating article, I am going to China next week - unfortunately not Pingxiang but it must be a fascinating place.