Ten Years Of WTO Entry: Joy And Sorrow: Dream And Loss Of Dream Of Textile Power

"1 billion pairs of socks for a plane", this is probably about.

"Look back again, the clouds will break away, and then look back, the thorns are thick."

Looking back to the ten years after WTO entry, after the baptism of the global economic crisis, the impact of trade friction and the rising cost, China's textile industry embarked on the path of pformation and upgrading from "cost fixing and price fixing" with the dream of "textile power".

High growth textile industry suffers from recession

The textile industry was a favorite industry when it entered the WTO. At that time, many people thought that the textile industry would be the "biggest winner".

2002, the first year of China's accession to the WTO, China's textile industry

Reporters learned from the China Textile Import and Export Chamber of Commerce, according to the World Trade Organization statistics, in 2001, China's textile and garment exports accounted for 15.6% of global exports, accounting for 31.7% of global exports in 2009, and expected to reach 33% in 2010, becoming the world's largest textile and garment exporting country.

However, in the "high-speed growth", "the first big country" these

Raw material price fluctuation is the main cause of labor pains.

As an important raw material in the textile industry, cotton prices have gone through the roller coaster market since last year. Cotton prices climbed to 30 thousand yuan per ton, and now they drop to more than 19000 yuan per ton.

Textile enterprises are in trouble this year. This year is considered to be a more difficult year than the financial crisis of 2008.

Some analysts say that the cost burden of textile industry has changed little in the past ten years.

At the beginning of joining the WTO in 2001, the main business cost of the industry accounted for 88% of the main business income, and by 2010, the proportion was 87.79%.

However, the cost and risk control ability of enterprises has not been overall and substantially improved.

In addition, the global economic recovery is slow and variable, exacerbating the uncertainty of the growth of the textile industry.

Because of the lack of confidence in the industry's future development and export prospects, some enterprises have to reduce the volume of clothing trade or pfer to other industries.

In fact, as early as 2008, similar scenes were staged.

At that time, the textile industry appeared the first negative growth for many years. The global financial crisis caused the textile export demand to shrink dramatically. The operating rate of Jiangsu and Zhejiang textile enterprises was only 40% at the end of October.

"The textile industry has gone through many market fluctuations over the years. The ups and downs of the market economy are inevitable, but we can't stop production without any risk."

The head of a large textile enterprise in Shandong told reporters that enterprises should have measures to hedge risks such as arbitrage and exchange, so as to reduce relative losses instead of waiting for starvation.

In fact, in the face of market fluctuations, the "big but not strong" feature of the high growth textile industry is revealed.

According to the materials provided by the Ministry of industry to the economic reference daily, the textile industry has experienced rapid growth in the past ten years, and has accumulated a series of contradictions and problems.

Especially because the scale of the textile industry is large, the degree of concentration is low, the small and medium enterprises are mostly, the development level of each other is quite different, and some contradictions and problems are still outstanding.

Trade frictions go hand in hand.

In 2004, in order to deal with Sino US trade frictions, the Chinese government and industry groups organized contacts with the United States.

Gao Yong, who took part in the negotiations, remembers clearly that from the top of the US government to the industry associations and enterprises, the employment population of the US textile industry has been reduced at a rate of 4 to 6 thousand per week.

The developed countries in Europe and the United States may be unwilling to face up to the fact that China's textile industry is suffering huge losses because of trade protection measures.

Zhu Rongji recalled in the record of Zhu Rongji's speech that because of the discriminatory textile quota measures in the United States, China "destroyed 10 million spindles and 1 million 200 thousand people lost their jobs, causing great difficulties to us. Now the most difficult part of state-owned enterprises is the textile enterprises."

After China's accession to the W T O in 2001, textile and garment exports began to grow rapidly, and socks and other products increased by more than a dozen times a year. The developed countries in Europe and the United States saw this as a "socks campaign" and began to adopt "special safeguard measures" for Chinese textiles. When importing a surge in imports of certain products, import countries or economies could take some urgent trade restrictive measures.

In accordance with the agreement on textiles and clothing, since 2005, the quota system for textile and clothing has been abolished for more than 40 years, and textile and clothing exports have entered the "quota free era".

In 2005, China's textile exports surged, and textile industry indexes reached a new high.

However, after the abolition of textile and clothing quotas, Europe and the United States did not give up restrictions on Chinese products.

It was not until January 1, 2008 that the EU completely liberalized China's textile and garment market, but aimed at China.

In July 2006, the US Department of Commerce launched an anti-dumping investigation on imports of polyester staple fibres in China, involving an export amount of about 65 million US dollars, involving nearly 100 Chinese companies.

The Chinese textile import and Export Chamber of commerce at that time designated the case as "the first major case of textile anti-dumping between China and the United States".

After ten years of WTO entry, textile and clothing industry is the first industry to be restricted by trade protection, and has always been the hardest hit area of trade friction.

In recent years, the China Textile Import and Export Chamber of Commerce has organized more than 80 foreign anti-dumping cases against China's textiles and garments, 20 cases of safeguard measures and special cases.

In addition to Europe and the United States, Turkey, Brazil, Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, South Africa, Mexico and many other developing countries frequently use various trade remedy measures to restrict China's textile and clothing exports.

According to the analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's Industry Injury Investigation Bureau, after the abolition of the quota system, textile trade has not really liberalized the market, instead of labor standards, special safeguard measures, green barriers, environmental barriers, technical barriers, and a series of new forms of trade restrictions.

The trade friction of textile and clothing is occurring year after year. The difference is that China's response is more relaxed.

Gao Yong believes that trade frictions have not restricted the export growth of Chinese textile and clothing, while the government, industry departments and enterprises have enhanced their coping ability in the process.

The responsible person of the China Textile Import and Export Chamber told the economic reference daily that a complete response process and coping mechanism has been gradually formed, and good results have been achieved in many key cases.

Among them, the EU anti-dumping case of chemical fiber cloth was awarded the ruling of the market economy status of the 26 enterprises which had never been seen before. The United States polyester staple fiber anti-dumping case got a rare zero tax rate; the India Satin anti-dumping case revoked the investigation of a category product; Turkey and Brazil cases obtained the first part respectively.

Transformation and upgrading is imminent.

After ten years of rapid growth, the era of "low cost and high growth" of Chinese textile industry is passing away. Some people in the industry even lamented that the golden period of textile industry has come to a close.

Wang Tiankai, President of the China Textile Industry Federation, said that during the "12th Five-Year" period, the textile industry was faced with increasing labor and resources and environmental constraints.

"After thirty years of rapid growth, China's economy is beginning to face Lewis's turning point. The textile industry as a labor-intensive industry, the labor cost increase has brought a heavy burden to the textile enterprises."

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Gu Qingliang, a professor at Donghua University, believes that the growth mode that relied on low labor costs and high working intensity to gain competitive advantage has been difficult to continue. Enterprises need to find new growth points.

China's labor cost advantage has been weakening, and orders for textile and clothing have intensified to Southeast Asia and other regions.

According to the US Department of Commerce, from 2011 to August, the total volume of imports of cotton products from Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia increased by 3.35%, 0.97% and 2.45% respectively, while the total number of cotton products imported from China decreased by 16.61% compared with the same period in August.

With the increasing domestic resources and environmental constraints, the state's requirements for energy conservation and emission reduction will continue to improve. Textile industry must put "low carbon, energy saving and green environmental protection" in a more important position.

Gu Qingliang believes that textile enterprises face greater "green" pressure.

To participate in the global textile market competition, enterprises must adapt to the higher threshold of international environmental protection and carbon identification, and at the same time, the domestic environmental standards for textile enterprises are also increasing.

Therefore, achieving sustainable development is another difficult problem faced by textile enterprises.

At the same time, Europe and the United States take advantage of technological innovation.

Compared with European and American countries, China's textile industry has a sharp gap in science and technology and brand building.

According to the materials provided by the Ministry of industry and information, the independent creative ability of the core technology of the domestic textile industry is still relatively weak. Some key technologies such as high-performance fibers, high performance industrial textiles, high-end textile machinery and so on have made relatively slow progress in R & D, and some core technologies are still being developed in developed countries.

The construction of independent brand is still a weak link in the textile industry, and there is a lack of a truly famous brand with international influence.

The proportion of independent brand export is still not high, and the international marketing network is still in the hands of import purchasers. China's textile export enterprises still have low control over the international market.

Jiang Weizhen, President of the textile and Textile Bureau, told reporters in an interview with the economic reference daily that along with the coming of the high cost era and the increasingly normalization of the high cost era, the profit space is being squeezed constantly. An enterprise must develop and cannot get a meager profit by cheap processing elements.

It is technically innovative to use more alternatives to enrich textile materials and ease the pressure of high cotton prices.

From the development of new products and brand building, truly enhancing the added value of products is the foundation for the rapid development of enterprises' pformation and upgrading.

After joining the WTO for ten years, the textile industry has been pursuing the dream of "great power".

In the next ten years, "textile power" is still the biggest vision of industry development.

It is understood that the positioning of the "12th Five-Year plan" of the textile industry is to persist in pformation and upgrading, strengthen independent innovation, brand building, personnel training and energy conservation and emission reduction, laying the foundation for becoming a textile power.

The Ministry of consumer goods industry officials of the Ministry of industry and Commerce revealed that the development of the textile industry in 12th Five-Year will adhere to the main line of "accelerating the pformation of development mode", mainly in five aspects: first, the expansion of injection weight to the upgrading of quality; the two is to shift the integrity of industrial chain to the upgrading of value chain; three, to pay attention to the coordinated development of the east to the East and the central part; four, to focus on the pformation of international market to expand domestic demand; five, to pay attention to the pformation of traditional industries to traditional industries and new economic growth points.

In the ten years after China's entry into the WTO, although the textile industry has been clouded by multiple unfavorable factors such as low external demand, rising costs, and order shifting, the restless pformation and upgrading has made many people in the industry full of confidence in the future.

China Textile Import and Export Chamber of Commerce responsible person said that the textile and garment industry has an important position in the development of China's national economy. In the next ten years and further into the future, textile and garment exports still have bright prospects.

Although export scale may be reduced, the number one export position in the world is hard to shake.

And more export products will shift from O E M (processing production) to O D M (design and production). The product structure and quality will be improved. The industry will increase product design, surface accessories research and development, production process improvement, supporting logistics, brand development and overseas marketing channels, and push China's textile and garment export from a big country to a powerful country.