The edge of billiards in a small county in northeastern Jiangxi
In 2015, China’s first Chinese-style billiards World Championship kicked off in Yushan County, creating a new milestone for Chinese-style billiards to the world. In March this year, the 3rd Chinese Billiards World Championship will continue to be held in Yushan County. A total of nearly 400 players from more than 40 countries and regions will gather in Yushan.
In recent years, Yushan County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province has been well-known by more people for hosting international billiard tournaments in successive years.
A small county in northeastern Jiangxi, why is it so favored by international competitions? According to Hu Jianfei, secretary of the Yushan County Party Committee, Yushan has an indissoluble bond with billiards. Marble and bluestone slabs are high-quality materials for making billiard tables, and Yushan County has a reserve of 3 billion cubic meters. The star brand snooker table made of bluestone plates is world-famous and has become the designated special product for many billiards competitions such as the British League Cup, the German Masters, and the Chinese Snooker Tour. Yushan County has an annual output of more than 30,000 sets of billiard tables and 150,000 billiard tables. They are sold well in Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States, with an output value of more than 400 million yuan. It is the country’s largest billiard table plate production base.
Although the billiard tables produced in Yushan County are sold all over the world every year, only raw materials and initial products are provided, and the technical content is not high, and the brand of sports goods is basically blank. How to make the billiard industry bigger? The Yushan County Party Committee and the county government have tried their best to “invite” Xingpai Group from Beijing into the Yushan Industrial Park, driving billiard-related companies to grab the beach in Yushan. Hu Jianfei told reporters that in order to enrich the cultural connotation of billiards, Yushan signed a contract with Xingpai Group to build an international billiards cultural industry park covering an area of 650 acres and investing 3 billion yuan in five years. The cultural industry complex composed of product research and development and historical exhibitions strives to integrate the sports industry with tourism, culture, and urban construction.
“Although billiards is only a single sports item, the entire billiard industry chain still has huge potential and needs to be actively tapped by related industries.” Hu Jianfei said that Yushan regards the sports industry led by billiards as an important starting point for the county’s economic transformation and upgrading. , Use this sports business card to promote urban economic development.
According to the overall plan of the Yushan County Government, in addition to the annual Chinese Billiard World Championships, national and provincial and municipal billiards competitions will be introduced in the future. It is expected that the frequency of billiards events alone can reach once every two months. Yushan County also clearly proposes to build the billiard city as a scenic spot, make the event a branded tourism product, integrate leisure, entertainment, and sports into the billiard industry, and attract domestic and foreign tourists and well-known billiard players who love sports to play billiards and watch billiards in Yushan. ,Leisure Travel.
Judging from the current situation, Yushan County has achieved significant benefits from this development strategy. In 2015, Yushan was awarded the title of “Five-star Tourism County in Jiangxi Province”, achieving tourism revenue of 8.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40.9%. In 2016, the industrial added value of Yushan County ranked 25th among the 100 counties in Jiangxi Province, 5 places higher than the previous year.
From a billiard table to the “Billiard Capital of China”, Yushan’s goal is to match Sheffield, a well-known British snooker game city. Hu Jianfei said that the sports industry is only a breakthrough in the economic transformation and upgrading of Yushan County. In the future, Yushan will take the opportunity of hosting the World Billiard Championships to promote the upgrading of urban quality, consumption upgrades, accelerate the development of modern service industry and tourism, and cultivate new economic growth. Points to promote the county’s economic development to achieve both quality and efficiency improvements.