The majority of Chinese natural stone comes from Fujian, the region around the provincial capital of Xiamen. Two-thirds of the exports pass through this port, but Xiamen is now also becoming increasingly important as an import centre.Xiamen has been a special economic zone in China since the 1980's. The degree of accessibility is therefore particularly high, likewise the share of foreign investment. All this obviously also applies to the natural stone sector, which largely explains its particularly strong growth.According to information from the Xiamen Stone Chamber, 426 export and 221 import companies are currently active in international natural stone trading in the Xiamen region.

Exports from the region itself reached a value of over 470 million US dollars last year. Over half of these (54.5 %) were sold in Japan. The EU holds second place with imports to the value of 102 million US dollars and a share of 21.3 %. The most important customers in the EU are Germany (32.4 million US $), Belgium (19.6 million US $) and Holland (13.8 million US $). Almost as high as exports to the EU are those to South Korea (96 million US $, share: 20.1 %). Imports are growing proportionally much more than exports at present. According to the Xiamen Stone Chamber, natural stones worth over 210 million US dollars were imported from over 40 countries throughout the world last year. More than one-third of these were imports from India (71 million US $). Other important supplier countries were Brazil (23 million US $), Egypt (20 million US $), Turkey (14 million US $), South Africa (11 million US $), Italy (11 million US $) and Greece (10 million US $) (Stone Report, November 2004. China World's Largest Stone Consuming Country, March 2005)