This year’s most important development for the Swiss watch industry is the revival of the mainland China market. China is riding to the Swiss industry’s rescue – again. During the Great Recession of 2009, when exports dropped a hair-raising 22.3%, the China boom saved the Swiss-watch day. Exports came roaring back by 22.7% in 2010, and the China legend was born.

In 2012, the boom went bust when the government began a severe anti-corruption campaign that unexpectedly turned luxury watches into the poster child for bureaucratic misbehavior.

Now, though, China is hot again. “Mainland China has been really quite strong and has been for nine months,” the Richemont Group’s outgoing chief financial officer, Gary Saage, told financial analysts in May. Through the first eight months of 2017, Swiss watch exports to mainland China are up 19.4%, the best among Switzerland’s 30 top markets. It’s part of a new surge of sales of luxury goods in China.

Analysts cite several factors. Five years on, anti-corruption fever is dying down and corporate gift-giving is picking up. The turmoil that roiled the Chinese stock market last year, and halted luxury spending, has subsided, resulting in a feel-good factor and shopping surge. The government has taken steps to boost consumer spending at home rather than abroad. It has cut visas to Hong Kong to prevent binge shopping there and slapped higher duties on luxury goods purchased overseas by Chinese consumers. And watch companies – Cartier is one – and other luxury firms have removed the so-called “China premium” on goods that drove up prices during the boom. The lower prices mean higher sales.