Fujian had little modern industry prior to 1950. A shipyard was built at Fuzhou in 1866, but it was largely destroyed in the 1880s. There was some Russian and Japanese investment in tea and textiles in the 1870s and a spurt of overseas Chinese investment in food-processing industries in the coastal areas in the early 1900s, but overall, the modern industrial base was negligible at the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.

During the 1950s investment in the province was hampered by the national government’s decision to emphasize China’s inland rather than coastal provinces and by conflict in the Taiwan Strait, which made Beijing hesitant to invest in a possible war zone. Fujian’s share of investment was smaller than that of any other province in east China. Gradually, however, for strategic and developmental reasons, the economy began to grow, and regional centres, particularly in the Min River valley, developed. Nanping became a key forest-products centre, acquiring one of the country’s most advanced pulp and paper plants. Sanming became the site of a medium-sized iron and steel plant that utilized local coal and iron reserves. The development of a major cement plant at Shunchang laid the foundation for the local building materials industry.

Provincial economic growth increased markedly when the government began encouraging the development of coastal trading cities. Fujian and Guangdong were given special powers in 1979 to attract foreign investment, particularly in export industries, and to establish special economic zones for that purpose. One such zone was set up northwest of Xiamen in the 1980s to develop industrial sites and support infrastructure there. The effect was to double Xiamen’s harbour capacity.

A second special economic zone was established in southern Fujian adjacent to Shantou, Guangdong province, and was similar to those set up in Shanghai and the Pearl (Zhu) River Delta. It was designed to orient economic growth in the region toward the production of light industrial goods for export. A similar development pattern took place in Fuzhou, which was designated one of China’s “open” cities in 1984 and which has been creating an economic and technical development zone near the port city of Mawei.

There has been a major push since the 1980s to develop plants manufacturing electronics, synthetic fibres, garments, plastics, and precision instruments. Another area of significant growth was in value-added reexport manufacturing (i.e., processing imported raw materials or assembling imported parts and components into finished products for reexport). Much of this development was accomplished through joint ventures with foreign companies and by acquiring advanced technology and equipment from abroad. The result has been the formation of a comprehensive industrial production system in the province focused on light industries.

Fujian has long been known for the high quality and great variety of its traditional arts and crafts products. Notable are “bodiless” lacquerware (a method of molding objects out of pure lacquer), Shoushan stone carvings, cork pictures, Xiamen bead embroidery, Quanzhou puppets, bamboo and rattan wares, toys, fireworks, and art pottery. These products are all well known in China and are exported in large quantities.

Transportation

Fujian’s overseas trade was virtually halted after 1950, the result of the Korean War and the partial blockade of the Fujian coast by the United States Navy and by Chinese Nationalist forces based on Taiwan. Fujian’s trade patterns consequently turned inland, especially after the completion in 1955 of the Xiamen-Yingtan railway, which was built across the Wuyi range to link the province with the Chinese national rail network. A branch line of this railway later extended southeastward from Waiyang (west of Nanping) to the capital city of Fuzhou in 1959. Another major line completed in 2005 north from Ganzhou in Jiangxi province enters Fujian southward and then turns southwest to connect with the city of Longyan, and then it connects farther southwest with a line completed in 2000 to reach the cities in Guangdong province as well. Fujian’s traditional isolation has also been breached more recently by the construction of modern highways, linking it to neighbouring Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces; in addition, an express highway along the coastline now connects Fuzhou with Xiamen. Air services centre on the chief airports at Fuzhou and Xiamen.

Fujian’s rivers remain important to the province’s transportation network. The headwaters of the Jin River, a tributary of the Futun River, are navigable for small boats up to the foot of the Wuyi Mountains, despite the river’s rocky channel and many rapids; boats bring downstream the tea grown on the slopes of the mountains. Below Jianning, larger boats of special construction are employed for the tea trade.