A weekend fireworks show at the Sky Theater in Liuyang, a county-level city in Central China’s Hunan province. CHINA DAILY
On a typical weekend night in Liuyang, a county-level city in Central China’s Hunan province, the dark sky becomes a vast canvas of light. Millisecond-precise electronic ignitions send thousands of fireworks blooming in carefully choreographed patterns, while drone formations weave through the bursts, turning the night sky into a live performance.
For a city that has been hand-rolling explosives since the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the spectacle is more than a visual marvel — it signals the rebirth of an ancient industry.
By pivoting from low-end, seasonal manufacturing to green technology, digital production and immersive cultural tourism, Liuyang’s 1,400-year-old fireworks industry has evolved into a powerhouse of new quality productive forces.
This transformation echoes a key theme of the ongoing annual two sessions, which has emphasized that new quality productive forces should not only nurture emerging sectors, but also upgrade traditional industries.
Today, the city accounts for about 60 percent of China’s domestic fireworks market and roughly 70 percent of its exports. But the real story is not just how many fireworks Liuyang produces — it is how the world’s oldest pyrotechnics hub has rebuilt its entire value chain.
For centuries, fireworks production in Liuyang was a precarious cottage industry. Families mixed black powder by hand and filled shells manually — a system that combined artisanal skill with serious safety risks and heavy pollution.
“Moving from scattered household workshops to centralized, professional factories was a qualitative leap in safety,” said Wen Guanghui, head of the export branch of the Liuyang fireworks and firecrackers general association, noting that the sector’s privatization and restructuring in 1998 laid the groundwork for modernization.
Yet the industry’s most dramatic transformation has taken place in the past few years, driven by digitalization and environmental innovation.
To tackle long-standing safety risks, more than 200 fireworks companies in Liuyang have completed digital upgrades.
Twenty fully automated demonstration lines now operate across the city, while more than 66,000 AI-enabled cameras feed into a centralized risk-warning system. Crucially, the most dangerous chemical-handling procedures now operate under “human-machine separation”, significantly reducing worker exposure to explosive materials.
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