According to media reports, the Inaugural Conference of China Lighting Industry Community & China Smart‑City Alliance was held in Shanghai recently. More than 100 lighting enterprises have joined the community. This marks the first step for Chinese lighting enterprises to evolve from small‑scale loose collaboration toward large‑scale industrial integration, and opens new opportunities for China to cooperate with the global lighting industry under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Led by Shanghai Feilo Acoustics Co., Ltd., the community gathers global lighting giants including Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), OSRAM, GE, Samsung (Republic of Korea), Simon (Spain), Schneider Electric (Germany), Everlight Electronics (Taiwan, China), as well as over 100 leading and small‑and‑medium‑sized Chinese lighting enterprises. Riding on the momentum of the Belt and Road Initiative, the community aims to explore new cooperation opportunities with the global lighting industry, exchange innovative achievements in integrated and original lighting technologies between China and the world, seek better alignment between intellectual capital and financial capital in China’s lighting sector, promote integration of industries and enterprises, and innovate business models for market‑demand matching.
On the same day, Samsung of the Republic of Korea signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Feilo Acoustics. Meanwhile, Shanghai Feilo Acoustics also signed general‑contract project agreements worth approximately RMB 3 billion with community members.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) refers jointly to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st‑Century Maritime Silk Road. Proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Initiative won wide international acclaim within only one and a half years and gained recognition across the Asia‑Pacific, Central Asia and Europe. Traversing the Eurasian continent, it connects the Asia‑Pacific economic circle in the east and the European economic circle in the west, serving as a major trade‑and‑economic corridor linking China with Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Africa and Europe.
The Silk Road Economic Belt facilitates economic integration across Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia to build a Eurasian economic community. The 21st‑Century Maritime Silk Road links Europe, Asia and Africa by sea. Together they form a land‑sea closed‑loop framework to advance regional economic integration and deliver inclusive win‑win cooperation. Covering China’s eastern, central and western regions and connecting multiple coastal port cities, the BRI enhances inter‑connectivity, industrial undertaking and industrial relocation across Chinese provinces, especially advancing infrastructure construction. Economic development relies on transportation networks, and roads require lighting facilities.
Customs statistics show that in 2014, 64 BRI‑related countries imported USD 6.744 billion worth of LED lighting products from China, representing a year‑on‑year increase of 211.84 % and accounting for 36.81 % of China’s total LED‑lighting export volume. Going forward, driven by the steady implementation of the BRI, global phase‑out policies for incandescent lamps, rising awareness of energy conservation and environmental protection, and growing influence of “Made‑in‑China” products, demand for Chinese LED lighting products in relevant countries will keep expanding.
Countries along the BRI routes are not only neighboring regions vital to China’s stability but also key grounds for China’s prosperity. Implementation of the BRI enables Chinese LED products to make great inroads into markets across Eurasia and Africa. More importantly, it promotes resource reallocation and optimizes industrial‑chain structures within the BRI economic circle, strengthening driving forces and improving development quality for China’s LED industry. As the BRI gains wider recognition and infrastructure projects move forward in participant countries, China’s LED industry will face unprecedented development opportunities.
