Ten Years Of WTO Entry And Loss: 1 Billion Pairs Of Socks To Change Planes

"1 billion pairs of socks for a plane" may be the most popular metaphor for China's textile industry.

In the ten years since China's accession to the WTO, China's textile industry has undoubtedly passed a "golden period".

However, if from

"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".

In 2002, the three major economic indicators of China's textile industry's gross output value, profits and exports reached a record high in the first year of China's accession to the WTO.

By the end of 2010, the total number of Enterprises above Designated Size in the national textile industry amounted to

Reporters learned from the China Textiles Import and Export Chamber of Commerce

However, behind the report cards of "high-speed growth" and "the first big power", the textile industry is experiencing pains.

Gao Yong, vice president of China Textile Industry Federation, said that the textile industry's operating efficiency has declined since May of this year.

Starting in October (some products started in August), affected by the international financial crisis and domestic inflation.

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

As an important raw material in the textile industry, the price of cotton (20585,50.00,0.24%) has gone through the roller coaster market since last year. The cotton price climbed to 30 thousand yuan per ton, and now it drops 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.

According to the analysis, from the proportion of cost to income,

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, a similar scenario occurred.

"The textile industry has gone through many market fluctuations over the years, and the ups and downs in the market economy are not allowed.

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

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 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, which caused great difficulties for us.

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 the Chinese textile and garment market, but the measures against anti-dumping and technical barriers against Chinese textiles and clothing had not been interrupted.

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 friction does not limit the growth of China's textile and clothing exports, while at the same time

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; the cases of Turkey and Brazil were first awarded some partial tax rates.

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."

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.

If enterprises want to compete in the global textile market, they must adapt to the higher international market.

At the same time, European and American countries are taking advantage of technological innovation to seize market share. China's textile industry is facing "two strikes" between emerging economies and developed economies.

According to the analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's Industry Injury Investigation Bureau, the developed countries can gradually pform the textile industry into a technology intensive industry by taking advantage of their technological advantages and retake the share in the textile market.

With the support of advanced patent technology and famous trademarks, the export of textile industry in developed countries has developed from the output of products and the export of capital to the new stage of brand export. The middle and high-end market of international textile and garment industry has been controlled by controlling brands.

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.

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 not get cheap profits 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 "12th Five-Year" development of the textile industry will adhere to the main line of "accelerating the pformation of development mode", which is mainly reflected in five aspects: first, the expansion of the injection weight to the qualitative upgrading; two, the emphasis on the pformation of the industrial chain to the upgrading of the value chain; three, the pformation from the east to the East and the central part, and four to the East and the central part.

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.