Projects specific to women's craft industry are flourishing across China. From Guangxi's Bagui Qiaoniang, Gansu's Longyuan Qiaoshou, and Shaanxi's Sanqin Qiaoniang to Sichuan's Women's Revitalization Workshops, women's federations, at all levels, have tapped into local specialties and traditional crafts to promote skills training, build brands and match production and sales channels. The federations have created platforms to help women start businesses and/or find employment close to their homes.
The All-China Women's Federation has implemented the Action for Women's Employment and Entrepreneurship, to help women achieve high-quality full employment. Across China, women's federations have guided women as they have engaged in embroidering, paper-cutting, weaving and/or other crafts, which have suited their local traditions, so the women can turn their "fingertip skills" into a vibrant "fingertip economy," which in turn has boosted the women's incomes.
This article focuses on Sanqin Qiaoniang, an iconic brand for women's craft industry in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
Women are turning millennia-old crafts into a "fingertip economy" in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, which is helping the women boost their incomes. Under the guidance and support of Shaanxi Women's Federation, Sanqin Qiaoniang has become an iconic brand for women's craft industry in Shaanxi.
Building Stage
Shaanxi has a long history and a rich cultural heritage, both of which have given rise to a wide variety of women's crafts.
In recent years, Shaanxi Women's Federation has consistently prioritized the women's craft industry as one of three key special industries to promote entrepreneurship, employment, income growth and prosperity for women, in both urban and rural areas. By developing Sanqin Qiaoniang, the flagship brand, the federation has built a broad stage for women to inherit cultural heritage, to realize their individual value, foster the healthy growth of the women's craft industry, help women gain employment and increase their incomes, and make every effort to support rural revitalization.
Under the federation's guidance, Shaanxi Women's Handicraft Association has been advancing the standardization of traditional crafts in Shaanxi, such as embroidering, crocheting and knitting, grass weaving and paper cutting, since 2019.
Cui Wei, chairperson of the association, is the key driving force behind standardized production. Cui's team spent six years visiting more than 200 cooperatives in Shaanxi, as it helped refine standards and improve product quality. By promoting standardization, the team helped lay the foundation for crafts' industrial and brand development, which enabled the women to achieve better lives.
The federation is building a full-chain, craft-making development system, and it is establishing standardized-production training and production networks, which cover workshops, cooperatives and households. The federation has provided craft-making-skills training to more than 20,000 people. The federation has also empowered women with other skills, including AI design and digital-platform management.
In recent years, the products under Sanqin Qiaoniang have spread beyond the rural areas, across the country, and even appeared on the international stage. By integrating the women's works into modern living scenarios, a variety of product categories have emerged, such as cultural creative products, home furnishings and accessories. In this way, time-honored crafts have been tailored to suit present-day consumer preferences.
To date, the Sanqin Qiaoniang brand has helped establish more than 3,000 craft-making organizations, attracted 340,000 women to enter the craft industry, and achieved an annual output value in excess of 1.6 billion yuan (US $235 million). While inheriting traditional skills, women across Shaanxi have also been weaving their own brilliant futures.
Shared Prosperity
Xiqin Embroidery, a national intangible cultural heritage, thrives in Qianyang County, in Baoji, a city in Shaanxi Province. Local women learn embroidering at a young age, and, throughout the years, embroidering has evolved into a key industry driving income and employment for local women.
Li Yinhui, a craftswoman from Yanjia, a village in Qianyang County, began learning to embroider in 1982. Initially, she and her fellow embroiderers barely made a living, as they received sporadic orders for tiger-head hats and tiger-head shoes. More than a decade ago, her annual earnings were about 20,000 yuan (US $2,941), Li recalls.
In June 2017, Li established Qianyang Qianhui Craft Cooperative. The cooperative prioritized employing rural left-behind women, impoverished women and people with disabilities.
In 2020, with support from both the federation and the association, the cooperative solved product inconsistency and improved production efficiency. Today, the cooperative has 33 regular on-site employees and more than 200 floating workers. In recent years, it has offered job opportunities to nearly 1,000 women, across the county, and those jobs have paid an average monthly income of 1,000-3,000 yuan (US $147-441). In 2025, the cooperative's sales revenues exceeded 1.5 million yuan (US $0.22 million).
In recent years, supported by local policies, many young people and "second-generation embroiderers," who had moved to cities for work, have returned to Qianyang. They have learned embroidering and become engaged in online sales. Li's daughter runs an online shop and is learning to embroider from her mother. "Embroidered crafts have become our distinctive tourism and cultural products, attracting many visitors," Li says, with pride.
During the China Yangling Agricultural High-tech Fair (in Shaanxi), in both 2023 and 2025, Li's products — cloth tigers, tiger-head shoes and tiger-head hats — were displayed in the Sanqin Qiaoniang exhibition area. During the fairs, some of the employees with the Sanqin Qiaoniang brand team, and a livestreaming team from Qin Women's E-commerce Special Committee, took turns hosting livestreaming sessions to promote Li's embroideries. Such efforts greatly expanded sales channels.
Qianhui Cooperative has become a pillar in the local embroidery industry. Li has transformed herself, from an average rural woman into a pioneer guiding local women to increase their incomes. With a single embroidery needle, Li has passed down the 1,000-year-old Xiqin Embroidery craft, and she has stitched a path to shared prosperity for Qianyang's women.
Qianhui Cooperative exemplifies Sanqin Qiaoniang's "standardized production, brand empowerment and market operation" development concept. Sanqin Qiaoniang has helped revitalize Shaanxi's intangible-cultural-heritage crafts, and it has helped advance women's development and rural revitalization. The brand has helped "fingertip skills" blossom into a thriving "fingertip economy." In the future, as brand influence continues to expand, more women will be able to showcase their works on broader stages, and in turn have a promising future.
Photos from Interviewees and VCG
(Women of China English Monthly June 2026)
Editor: Wang Shasha
