Foreign epidemic and events are restricting the export of our textile and garment

ICTSU

China is a major producer and exporter of textile and apparel products. According to the World Trade Report 2020 released by the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of 27, 2020, China’s textile exports reached 120 billion US dollars in 2019, accounting for 39.2% of global textile exports, up 1.3 percentage points from 2018. In 2019, China’s garment exports reached $152 billion, accounting for 30.8% of the world’s garment exports, down 1.1 percentage points from 2018.

In addition, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs, China’s textile and apparel exports in 2020 reached 291.22 billion dollars, up 9.6% year on year. The export of textiles was 153.84 billion US dollars, up 29.2% year on year; Garment exports were $137.38 billion, down 6.4 percent year on year. It showed that the core competitiveness of Chinese textiles in the global industrial chain strengthens further, while the competitiveness of garments decreases gradually.

On the one hand, the impact of the epidemic abroad leads to a decrease in the demand for domestic clothing, coupled with the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend in China, multinational large brand enterprises (such as Nike, Adidas, etc.) all require Chinese suppliers to transfer to Southeast Asia, and the production competitive advantage of the Chinese clothing industry is gradually declining. On the other hand, with the continuous improvement of the competitiveness of Chinese textiles, foreign markets began to derivative events to boycott the import of Chinese textiles. On March 21, 2021, H&M Group issued an unreasonable statement to boycott Xinjiang cotton. Subsequently, the incident continued to ferment. Many foreign brands, such as Nike, Adidas, Converse, Uniqlo and Burberry, accused the cotton picking process in Xinjiang of “forced labor” and “religious discrimination”, and announced to boycott Xinjiang cotton. The purpose of the boycott of raw materials is to break the chain of China’s textile and garment industry chain, and further compress the profit rate of intermediate links by the way of raw material price increase, which directly affects the supply of raw materials and price fluctuations of the textile and garment industry.

Therefore, after the epidemic, the domestic textile and garment industry is faced with the dilemma of shrinking downstream market, declining export and suppression of foreign enterprises. However, there are challenges and difficulties, as well as development opportunities. This paper discusses the development ideas of textile and garment industry in the post-epidemic era from three aspects: industrial structure, production end and market end.


Post time: Dec-22-2022