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Luna Sun

Creating a new diamond used to be a process spanning millions or even billions of years. Now, it takes about a week.
Inside specialised factories, hulking 50-tonne machines simulate the crushing pressure and extreme temperatures inside the Earth’s crust, transforming seed crystals into flawless, glittering stones in just a few days.
Zhongjing Diamond, a company based in China’s central province of Hubei, has nearly 300 of the machines humming around the clock, which together mint some 600,000 carats of crude diamonds every year.
China has pioneered the production of lab-grown diamonds, allowing its factories to churn out precious stones at an unprecedented scale. The country makes more rough artificial diamonds than the rest of the world combined.
And the stones are rapidly winning over consumers. Sales of lab-grown diamonds are booming, with Fortune Business Insights projecting that the market will grow from US$25.89 billion in 2024 to US$74.45 billion by 2032.
“They sparkle just as brightly, and for a fraction of the cost,” said Fan Zuhua, deputy general manager at Zhongjing Diamond.
But the rise of lab-grown stones is also sparking questions amid shifting trends. As diamonds transform from a precious resource into an industrial product, many are wondering: have synthetic gems been eroding demand for the real thing?


Speculation has intensified as the price of natural stones endures a global slide and consumer surveys indicate a rapid uptick in purchases of lab-grown gems.
Natural diamond prices have declined 30 per cent over the past three years and are still trending downwards, falling by 5.7 per cent in 2025 as of August, according to the Zimnisky Rough Diamond Index, which tracks price changes for uncut gems.
In the United States, the world’s largest diamond market, more than half of couples now buy lab-grown diamond engagement rings, according to a survey conducted in January by The Knot, a wedding planning website.
A mix of economic and cultural factors is pushing consumers towards lab-grown diamonds, industry insiders said – though the long-term impact on the broader diamond market remains unclear.
Fan, the Zhongjing deputy general manager, said the recent dip in natural diamond sales may just be a temporary blip driven by a global economic slowdown.
“We’re not out to destroy the natural diamond market – that would mean destroying our own,” Fan said. “What’s happening is simply a reflection of global economic conditions. Consumers are being rational.”
Others, however, say shifting consumer attitudes may also be at work. It could be that lab-grown stones simply fit with the values of many millennials, who are gradually replacing baby boomers as the diamond industry’s main target market, according to Marty Hurwitz, executive director of the Global Diamond Trade Organisation.
“This next generation of consumers is critical,” Hurwitz said. “They’re buying things that are less expensive and more related to sustainability and climate change, and lab-grown diamonds happen to be coming along at the right time.”


It is easy to see why so many consumers are tempted. Lab-grown diamonds are not simply imitations: chemically and physically, they are identical to natural stones. To the naked eye, the two are indistinguishable.
But synthetic stones are far cheaper. A one-carat lab-grown diamond costs as little as 5,000 yuan (US$700). The price of a natural gem of the same size can be 10 times higher, sometimes more.
For Hurwitz, the rapid spread of lab-grown diamonds has been particularly startling because it has happened organically, without a major push by the big brands.
“Nobody has really done much advertising for lab-grown diamonds aside from Pandora, so this category has grown in jewellery stores mostly by word of mouth and social media,” he said.
Paul Zimnisky, a leading diamond industry analyst and creator of the Zimnisky price index, said that demand for lab-grown diamonds had picked up around 2019, “when prices of lab-grown diamonds got to about 40 to 50 per cent cheaper than equivalent-quality natural diamonds”.
Nevertheless, Fan is confident that natural diamonds will remain a luxury item for a long time. Though there is an overlap, he views natural and synthetic diamonds as separate products that ultimately serve two distinct classes of buyers.
“High-end collectors will always buy natural diamonds,” Fan said. “That’s an emotional purchase – a sense of status and rarity. But for ordinary consumers, lab-grown diamonds also deliver emotional value.”
Zimnisky echoed this view. In the natural diamond market, prices get exponentially higher for larger and higher quality stones, but that is not the case for lab-grown diamonds, he pointed out.
“At these larger sizes, the price differential between natural and lab-grown diamonds can be tens of thousands of dollars, so the products are presumably attracting different types of customers,” he said.

A widespread turn away from natural diamonds would be bad news for luxury companies. But China’s lab-grown diamond makers also face problems, as new players pile into the market and competition intensifies.
China has played a unique role in the development of artificial diamonds. The country began investing in the industry in the 1960s out of a pressing need to produce industrial diamonds for its military sector, successfully minting its first lab-grown stone in 1963.
Over the intervening decades, China became a global leader in high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) technology – one of the main methods used to produce artificial diamonds – and invested heavily to expand production, seeing the sector as a promising growth industry.
In 2024, China’s factories spewed out 22 million carats of synthetic diamonds, more than half of the world’s total production, according to data from the Diamond Industry Conference held in late September in Zhengzhou, capital of China’s central province of Henan.
“China’s HPHT technology is the most advanced in the world,” said Zhao Xiongli, marketing manager at Zhongjing Diamond. “Other countries can produce lab-grown diamonds too, but matching our efficiency and quality remains a real challenge.”
Yet, although lab-grown diamond sales are soaring, Chinese producers like Zhongjing operate in a tough environment. Most of them are only active in the low-margin, upstream part of the supply chain, pumping out rough diamonds that sell for a fraction of the cost of a finished stone.
“A one-carat rough stone sells for around US$20, but once polished into a finished diamond it can appreciate by 30 to 40 times,” Zhao said.
Every part of the industry is highly cutthroat. After cutting costs, there’s barely any margin left
Zhao Xiongli, Zhongjing Diamond
With a large number of factories all producing essentially the same product, competition among rough diamond makers has become fierce, forcing producers to slash prices to secure orders.
Lab-grown diamond prices have plunged 70 per cent since 2020, though they have stabilised in recent months, according to the Zimnisky index.
“Every part of the industry is highly cutthroat,” Zhao added. “After cutting costs, there’s barely any margin left. Right now, everyone’s just waiting for clear guidance from national policy – the competition feels a bit chaotic.”
To break out of this cycle, China’s diamond industry will need to expand into the more lucrative parts of the supply chain: polishing and cutting the gems, then selling them on to consumers, analysts said.
At the moment, that work largely takes place overseas, especially in India. About 700,000 people are employed in cutting and polishing diamonds in India, compared with just tens of thousands in China, Zhao estimated.
“In order for China to grow even more in the gem space, they need to solve this downstream vertical integration for them to make more margin,” Hurwitz said. “Selling the rock to India is not a long-term strategy.”
China’s diamond industry is also striving to move beyond the gem market. There is huge potential for lab-grown diamonds to be used in a raft of industries, from semiconductors and aerospace to quantum computing.
“We believe there are 10 different industries right now where product developers are using lab-grown diamonds,” Hurwitz said. Some of these applications are still in the early stages of development, but others are already “quite powerful”, he added.
Together, these industries generate gross revenues of more than US$3 trillion – a scale that “really dwarfs the gem industry”, according to Hurwitz.
Synthetic diamonds are already used in circuitry inside rockets and satellites due to their ability to conduct heat and resist radiation. Electric car companies are exploring the use of diamonds to improve battery performance and charging speeds. Diamonds could even be used to develop a next-generation navigation technology.
“In the future, lab-grown diamonds won’t necessarily appear as consumer-facing products like robots or electric cars,” Fan said. “They can still play a crucial role inside them. Think of it like the chip at the heart of a device.”

Despite China’s dominance as a producer, the country currently struggles to produce cutting-edge research into functional diamonds, industry insiders said. But that could soon change.
In Henan, companies are racing to develop more advanced technologies, allowing them to produce everything from gem-quality stones to high-performance polycrystalline diamonds for use in industrial cutting tools.
One company in the province recently made headlines by creating a 156.47-carat lab-grown diamond – the largest known single-crystal synthetic diamond in the world – breaking the previous record held by a Ukrainian firm.
The province is also investing to build a superhard materials cluster, with the aim of creating an industrial hub worth 1 trillion yuan (US$140 billion) and a world-leading centre for diamond and superhard materials technology by the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Commerce has moved to restrict exports of the technology and equipment used in six-sided presses, the core machines used to produce lab-grown diamonds. The new rules, which were announced last year, appeared designed to help China maintain its global lead in the industry, insiders said.
“It’s essentially a blockade,” said Zhongjing’s Fan, “keeping the technology at home and preventing other countries, especially India, from learning it.”
China’s diamond industry could not afford to be complacent, Hurwitz said, adding that although export restrictions may buy some time, innovation was advancing independently in several other countries.
To stay at the forefront of this huge emerging field, Chinese firms need to start forging deeper connections with product developers, embedding themselves in their research and development process, according to Hurwitz.
“You have to get in touch with them now,” he said. “Even though they might not be building the product now, they’re researching it.”


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China has pioneered the production of flawless artificial diamonds. Some worry they are eroding demand for the real thing


China has pioneered the production of flawless artificial diamonds. Some worry they are eroding demand for the real thing.


As China churns out artificial gems, is a diamond still forever?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}China has pioneered the production of flawless artificial diamonds. Some worry they are eroding demand for the real thing

China has pioneered the production of flawless artificial diamonds. Some worry they are eroding demand for the real thing