At a factory in China’s manufacturing heartland, workers manually add small splashes of paint or glitter to printed images of flowers – small tweaks designed to boost dwindling profits in the face of softer global demand.

“We would like to say that if you can go high-end, the better the quality of your paintings, the more classic they will be. But in the current global economy … the more we sell, the lower the price,” says Wang Xiaosha, general manager at Fujian Jie Ao Industrial in Minhou county in China’s south-eastern Fujian province.

Financial Times