Society
Gamblers hope to find jade treasure hidden in stones
By Chen Jia and Li Yingqing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-26 08:09
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New jade standard will help promote market
KUNMING: The Yunnan government is promoting a "new grade regulation standard" to determine the quality of jadeite in a bid to "discipline the flourishing market".
Che Zhimin, the general-secretary of the Yunnan Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, told China Daily yesterday that quality supervision of the gems and jade market will be strengthened further to ensure the precious stone culture can make its entry into the US and European Union (EU) markets.
Che said: "The Yunnan jadeite has a high reputation in the Asian market. We now want to promote international cooperation to take the stone to the US and EU."
He said jade was "fast becoming a hard currency", and its investing value may be a lot more than gold.
Mo Tai, dubbed the top jadeite expert in China, said Asia is still the major jade market.
"Yunnan's jade businessmen find it hard to sell the stone in the Western market because of unclear quality standard," he said, adding, "The design and carve of Chinese jade products are outdated."
"Yunnan used to have different versions of standards to determine the quality of jadeite," Deng Kun, the chief of Gem and Jade Quality Supervision Inspection and Research Institute of Yunnan, said.
"The structure is complicated and these standards are impractical in trading," he said.
"The new standard, however, has been well received in the market in the first two months of promotion," he said.
Mo said some greedy jade appraisers sell their word of the quality of the jade to make money from jade businessmen.
"I always keep my distance from jade businessman. Many of them try to buy my word to cheat consumers," he said.
"If jade businessmen got certification from the Supervision Inspection and Research Institute, consumers would no longer rely on those so-called jade experts' word," he said.
"We call jadeite's color 'se', and when we talk about its texture, we refer to the 'water' in the jade. These two things, color and water, directly determine the value of jadeite," he explained.
Li, a 30-year-old Kunming resident, who often invests in jade, said an official standard will make things for the buyer extremely easy.
"Even the jadeite market would accept the standard, since sellers will have solid proof of the quality of the stone," she said.
