In many respects, the development of China's emerging diamond industry can be compared most closely to the early development of the diamond market in the United States. As such, the role of the Shanghai diamond center most closely parallels that of New York, said New York Diamond Dealers Club (DDC) President Moshe Mosbacher in his address to the 2010 China Diamond Conference in Shanghai.

What traditionally has characterized New York, compared other leading centers of the global diamond trade, and soon will characterize Shanghai, Mosbacher said, is the need to focus almost exclusively on its domestic market.

"China's political leadership has declared its intention of raising the relative level of consumer spending so that it becomes a more critical source of growth in the Chinese economy… Research suggests that Chinese consumer consumption as a share of GDP will only approach the 40% mark by 2025, but that alone will result in a middle class in China that is approximately double the size of the one in the United States today," the DDC president stated.

"The bottom line for a diamond center like Shanghai, therefore, is similar to the one that we are reminded of daily in New York - it is all about the local consumer and local consumer confidence," Mosbacher said.

Mosbacher further explained that like New York, Shanghai today served as the national economy's financial nerve center. "And like the Diamond Dealers Club of New York… the Shanghai Diamond Exchange was the first diamond bourse to be established in mainland China, and it functions today as the official point of entry to this country's diamond market."