Zhu Cheng City

Zhucheng earned its reputation the hard way: by becoming China's poultry processing capital in a nation that consumes more chicken than any country except the United States. The city, tucked into Shandong Province's eastern coast, hosts the headquarters of Shandong Zhucheng Foreign Trade Group and dozens of smaller processors that collectively slaughter and package millions of birds annually. When a KFC or McDonald's in eastern China serves chicken, there is a reasonable chance it passed through Zhucheng's cold chains.

The city's industrial identity extends beyond poultry. Zhucheng manufactures commercial vehicles, auto parts, and construction machinery, with companies like Kion Group maintaining operations there. But the food processing cluster dominates, creating the kind of single-industry concentration that generates efficiency through specialization while amplifying vulnerability to supply chain disruptions. When avian influenza outbreaks hit Chinese poultry flocks, Zhucheng's economy feels the fever before anyone else.

Geologically, Zhucheng holds an older claim to fame: it contains one of the world's richest dinosaur fossil beds. Over 7,600 fossils from at least ten species have been excavated, including some of the largest hadrosaur specimens ever found. The city built a dinosaur museum around an in-situ excavation site stretching 500 meters. This accident of paleontology gives Zhucheng a tourism asset entirely unrelated to its industrial base—a form of economic diversification that arrived through geological luck rather than planning.

Zhucheng's dual identity—industrial poultry hub and dinosaur fossil destination—captures a pattern common in Chinese manufacturing cities: deep specialization in one commodity creates wealth but also fragility, while unrelated assets provide potential escape routes from monoculture risk.