Chinese accounts relate how in the early 1950s young art school graduates were drafted by the government into workshops specifically set up to create traditional Chinese arts for export, to earn much-needed foreign exchange. So far as I can gather, this was the Beijing Arts & Crafts Export Corporation, an umbrella group supervising workshops in cinnabar lacquer, jade, ivory, and cloisonne. Apart from the central Beijing factory, they also sent managers to outlying workshops to educate staff, ensure consistent quality, standardize designs, the resulting products packaged, marketed and exported by BA&CEC. They heyday of all this was the late 1970s and 1980s, after the Cultural Revolution ended and China and the US resumed trade.

Watching one of the Chinese TV programs on lacquer, I noticed the emphasis placed on the archaeological pieces discovered in the past 50 years, composed of black lacquer with swirling red designs. They reminded me of the beads in the attached pictures. The intact necklace with the "morning glory" clasp, better cloisonne beads, and Chinese knotting seems almost certainly to be from the 1970s-80s.

Each bead in the earrings has a different pattern - one seems to be dancers and musicians, the other seems to be two teams playing ball.
Debby Arem reports finding them in the early 1980s in a small Hong Kong shop not much frequented by Westerners.
The beads strung with carved cinnabar seem to show a sort of trailing lotus pattern, and another pattern of double leaves. Their similarity to the necklace and Debby's beads are obvious. The red cinnabar beads, examined with a loupe, display multiple layers and hand carving, so am guessing they're actual cinnabar lacquer-covered wood.

The patterns on the beads appear to be stamped, the circular lines look hand painted while the beads were spun, so guessing handwork instead of machine reproduction.

Black glossy paint, or actual black, red, gold-colored lacquer? Guessing paint, but how would one tell? Anybody know anything about this type of bead?