Diwali Patakha from China: The world's fireworks capital is reinventing its centuries-old industry

Nearly two-thirds of the world's fireworks trace back to a single Chinese county. Yet, nothing about the road into it hints at this. On a wet, spring morning, the drive from downtown Liuyang to nearby Dayao unspooled like any other provincial highway in inland China: mist-wrapped hills, patchwork farmland, clusters of concrete buildings. Some done up in the glossy bathroom-tile facades that pass for chic in small-town China, others still raw brick and exposed rebar.

But every few hundred metres, signboards popped up: 'Ouda Fireworks', 'Qingtai Fireworks', 'Pyro Liuyang'. Overhead, a red banner read: 'Number 1 town of fireworks in the world'.

It wasn't an idle boast. Liuyang, a 5,000 sq km district on Hunan province's eastern edge, supplies around 60% of China's domestic fireworks market, and 70% of the country's exports. China, in turn, accounts for close to 90% of fireworks sold worldwide. Which makes this obscure county, in effect, the pyrotechnic capital of the planet.


Liuyang belongs to a category of towns that almost no one outside the country has heard of, but that have nonetheless become hubs of world-dominating manufacturing: buttons, sex toys and, now, increasingly, AI-driven production systems. Liuyang's pull, though, runs deeper than industry. It's woven into local myth.

The skyline is dominated by a bronze statue of Li Tian, the semi-legendary local son credited with inventing the firecracker. Across the road, in Liuyang Fireworks Museum, a guide walked me through the standard version of his story.

Li Tian is said to have cured a Tang dynasty emperor of a mysterious ailment by packing bamboo husks with saltpetre and sulphur - a crude gunpowder that Daoist alchemists had stumbled on while searching for the elixir of immortality - and tossing them onto a fire. Bangs that followed drove off evil spirits blamed for the emperor's illness.

The legend may be dubious, but gunpowder's Chinese origins are not. A museum plaque traces its journey along the Silk Road to India, then West Asia, reaching Europe by the 13th c. In Liuyang, gunpowder was first harnessed not for war but for ritual. Baozhu, 'exploding bamboo', came to mark weddings, births, funerals and the Lunar New Year, believed to drive away evil and usher in fortune.

The industry's 20th-c. fortunes mirrored China's own upheavals. Wars dented trade. The Cultural Revolution nearly finished it, as Mao's campaign against 'Four Olds' banned firecrackers for their ties to superstition. Deng Xiaoping's reforms revived the industry from the 1980s, and by the early 2000s, Liuyang had become an integrated cluster: production, logistics and R&D, a model since replicated across China's manufacturing heartland.

Today, Liuyang lights up celebrations in over 100 countries. Some 99% of fireworks exploding across the US come from China - so essential a supply that Trump exempted Chinese fireworks from tariffs even amid his first-term trade war. No Chinese crackers, no 4th of July.

Numbers are staggering. The county houses 430 fireworks manufacturers, 60% of its 1.45-mn population works in the trade. In 2025, Liuyang exported ¥6.29 bn ($880 mn) of firecrackers, with domestic sales of ¥22.86 bn ($3.2 bn).

Wen Jing, a local official, describes an industry entering a new phase: digital ignition and smokeless launches. A drone-powered spectacle last October set two Guinness World Records - 7,496 drones igniting fireworks in synchrony, nearly twice that number tracing blossoming trees across the sky. Since 2023, 146 such displays have drawn 7 mn visitors and generated ¥20 bn ($2.8 bn) in revenue. Firecrackers as tourism economy, not just export commodity.

It was still raining when we pulled up at Liuyi Toy Fireworks showroom, one of a cluster of identikit outlets near Dayao International Firework Trade Mall. Founder Wang Xian Feng, former director of Liuyang Fireworks Industry Development Centre, described how far safety has come.

Explosions once killed scores annually. Today, licensing, designated production counties and tighter supply-chain oversight have made the industry more centralised and risk-averse. Risks have not vanished. In May, a blast at Huasheng Fireworks Manufacturing and Display Co, on Liuyang's outskirts, killed 37 people and injured 51, prompting Hunan province to suspend all 431 of its fireworks factories for emergency safety inspections.

Wang's current focus is exporting low-smoke, sulphur-free crackers on patented technology. 'India is the perfect market,' he said, envisioning pollution-free Diwalis. Using single-base powder, plant-fibre materials and specialised catalysts, the technology cuts post-combustion residue by up to 80%, with SO2 emissions near zero - a possible bridge across the same 'festivity vs air quality' tension behind India's own, largely unsuccessful, firecracker bans before Diwali.

AI, unsurprisingly, is never far from the conversation. Wang has signed an agreement with local authorities to deploy AI-driven data and design tools. It's part of a national push, under China's current 5-Year Plan, which now judges local officials less on foreign investment than on homegrown tech ecosystems. Even an industry built on gunpowder, it turns out, is being rewired by algorithms.

Yet, Liuyang's essence remains elemental, the same alchemy that once drove spirits from a Tang emperor, the visceral jolt of light and sound. However precise and drone-choreographed the industry becomes, ask any Chinese person and they will still equate a simple string of firecrackers with joy: loud, exuberant and, even in a regulation-heavy society, gloriously out of control.