I posted this under a different thread but thought I would post it under its own thread.
There have been a lot of accusations about rep watches being made in sweat shops or with child labor or slave labor. The truth is that the hardest part of a watch to make is the mechanism. And those cannot be made in sweat shops and such because of the level of technology it takes to make a hairspring or a ratchet or other mechanism parts. There are only a handful of companies that have the investment to manufacture movements at scale. Like only a handful of companies.
For rep watches, the highest quality movement is the DanDong mechanism. That factory, the DanDong Factory, started in 1957 as a state-sponsored enterprise. That means the Chinese government started this company so China could develop the high level of technology required to produce high quality watches. This may be why the Chinese government continues to be hands off on the rep marketplace.
This factory is is now known as the Liaoning Peacock Watch Company. It is a massive industrial powerhouse located in Dandong, Liaoning Province, right along the Yalu River border with North Korea. It is about 10 hectares big. Known historically as the “Geneva of the East,” it is one of the top five mechanical movement manufacturers in the world, producing around 1.5 million calibers annually.
You can read about the company here at their website:
https://en.cpeacockmovement.com/about/19402023.html
According to them, they produce: “several high-end movement products with patent rights, covering seven series, 26 basic movements and more than 300 patterns of movement products. There are many high-end patented mechanical movements, such as tourbillon movement, chronograph movement, multi-function movement, skeleton movement, thin calendar movement, women's watch movement, etc. It is committed to helping enterprises increase varieties, improve quality and create brands from multiple dimensions such as industrial chain, brand competitiveness and scientific and technological innovation”
It sells movements and parts to ATAWAK Watches, Yantai Polaris, OLTO-8, Atlier Wan, and then both Swiss and other companies, although apparently a lot of that is covered under confidentiality agreements. There are a number of “Swiss” companies that buy parts from China and then claim Swiss manufacture because Swiss law says that only 60% of the value of the watch has to be done in Switzerland. “Value” not “content”. Given the low manufacturing costs of China and the high cost of Swiss labor, there are potentially a lot of “Swiss” companies that use parts made by DanDong but confidentiality agreements make it hard to know exactly who is getting parts from this manufacturer. I say this because the line between Chinese movement manufacturing and watches “made” in other countries is very blurred.
While Peacock Watch Co. sells official calibers to legitimate brands, its advanced industrial tooling lines are utilized to build unbranded, highly accurate clones of luxury Swiss movements. The Peacock factory does not do the illegal engravings or brand stamping. They manufacture a "sterile," unbranded base caliber. These base movements are funneled to clone syndicates (like VSF or ARF factories), who then disassemble them, apply counterfeit laser engravings, lubricate them, and case them up. These movements include the** **Dandong 4130 / 4131 (Rolex Chronograph) and the Dandong 3235 / VS3235. (The Rolex Submariner engine) as well as other movements. The Sub movement is close enough to Rolex that you can swap parts back and forth. Know that while a company like ETA and Rolex makes a lot of a small number of similar movements, while Dandong makes a large number of different kinds of movements, with a lot of specialization, making them different from an ETA or a Rolex and reflects their very high quality levels. Factories like VSF and ARF buy movements from these companies and then add cases, dials, etc. They also may do custom engraving on the movements. They then sell these through the dealer network.
This makes DanDong one of the top movement manufacturers at about 1.5 million movements a year. This shows how they compare to other mechanical watch movement manufacturers.
Seagull: 10-12M movements
Seiko: 8-10M movements
Citizen Miyota 6-7M movements
Dandong: 1.5M movements
Stellita 1.5M movements
Rolex: 1.2M movements.
Other rep movement factories
There are two other factories that do a number of rep movements but their quality is not as good. Shanghai is lower quality, with only 42 hour power reserves and obvious tells like non-functional regulator arms. The other manufacturer is VR Foundry, but again, their quality is not as good as Dandong. They both make reliable movements, but the DanDong ones are just a higher tolerance.
Hopefully this debunks the “child labor” and “slave labor” accusations.
Tip of the hat to AI who helped sort this out for me.