Chinese tourbillons have gotten better and better as the desire to keep improving and honing in on “Swiss style” keeps Sino-horologists busy at their benches. When I would compare the time on the Peacock watches with a digital clock in my home for a few days in a row, I was impressed with how reliable the Peacock tourbillon was by comparison. While not everyone here in the U.S. will immediately like the Peacock brand name (though it is fitting given why men often enjoy luxury watches), the company is certainly not new and does a pretty decent job of producing Western-friendly mechanical timepieces for enthusiasts at fairer prices.

Peacock watch is the poster child for the most advanced horology that watchmakers in Dandong have been delivering since 1957 and kicked into high gear with the introduction in 2003 of its first watch featuring an in house tourbillon movement. Ten years later, in 2013, Peacock went one step further with the creation of a double tourbillon timepiece. As well as manufacturing at scale for other brands, Dandong Watches also developed its own marque, Peacock, which have come to symbolise tradition and innovation in exceptional timepieces for the Chinese business.

Peacock watch, a private and slightly higher-end firm, has more than 1,000 employees and makes around a million movements a year, putting it in range of Rolex by volume. Peacock movements accurate to +/-10 seconds a day and with power reserves of 41 hours, comfortably on a par with Swiss-made automatics such as the workhorse ETA 2824. “Made in China” doesn’t necessarily mean mediocre. Many of these mechanical movements are every bit as serviceable as those made by Swiss giants such as ETA or Sellita. The reason the end product is cheaper is because salaries and land purchase are cheaper in China. Basic economics not quality, in other words.

Companies like Peacock Watches are coming out with complications more and more prestigious and aim to eventually topple Swiss luxury brands. Peacock Watches have real ambitions in middle and even top range products. In Basel they showed their ability to produce manual or automatic movements and complications that go from the moon phases to the tourbillon. Peacock Watches showed its know-how by marketing watches with a retrograde date movement and moon phases and a co-axial tourbillon inside a 40 mm skeleton case.

The movement—a Liaoning Peacock SL6601—is actually a driving factor in the design of the 2016 watch. As the name implies, the SL6601 is manufactured by the famed Liaoning Peacock Watch Factory, which has been manufacturing movements since 1958 and is one of China’s largest watch movement manufacturers with a catalogue that includes automatic chronographs and hand-wind tourbillons. The SL6601 is an automatic movement with a date at 6 o’clock and two sub-dials—running seconds at 9 o’clock and a power reserve indicator at 3 o’clock. The standout feature of the movement, and the primary reason why it was chosen for this project, is its impressive 70-hour power reserve.

The Liaoning Peacock Watch Company, which is found in the Liaoning Province, is one more particularly modern watch manufacturer. It was one of the initial eight such established in the 1950s. Initially, what they did was produce countless movements; however, with this being said, they were all based on either the Swiss or Russian calibers. Only later in the 1980s would they improve on the Chinese Standard Movement. These calibers, which had been upgraded, were then fitted into the watches to be marketed under the Peacock brand. The Peacock Watch Company has recently moved into higher complications such as the tourbillons. Believe it or not, these tourbillon movements proved to be of substantial enough quality that Swiss Made approved their use. The Swiss brand Cecil Purnell reportedly used them in one of the model lines.