The Next Two Major Directions For The Development Of Textile And Garment Industrial Clusters

Since 2002, the China Federation of textile industry (the former China Textile Industry Association) has carried out the pilot work of the cluster development of textile industry.

Today, the pilot textile cluster area has developed from the initial 38 counties to 175 counties (towns and counties) up to the end of 2010, and its textile industrial cluster economy accounts for more than 80% of the total textile economy.

It can be said that the textile industrial cluster area mainly based on the regional economy of the city (county) and town has become an important part of China's textile and garment industry with its vigorous economic vitality.

The growing industrial cluster economy

After reform and opening up, China's textile industry

Under the background of the policy of reform and opening up and the adjustment of international industrial structure, relying on the comparative advantage of factor cost, the industry scale has been formed by supporting industry, returning to the country and promoting industrial concentration.

Sun Ruizhe, vice president of China Textile Industry Federation, believes that with the growth of the domestic textile and garment industry, the development of textile and garment industrial clusters has gone through three stages.

The first stage, after the reform and opening up to the beginning of 1990s, the regional economic development has entered the stage of "primitive Industrial Agglomeration".

In this stage, relying on the coastal trade and trading market, textile and garment manufacturing enterprises show a concentrated distribution trend, but the industrial correlation is small, and the coordination operation function is not perfect.

The second stage is from the beginning of 1990s to the beginning of twenty-first Century. The textile and apparel industry cluster has entered the stage of "industry related agglomeration". The "regional brand" has gradually formed, the industrial chain has become more complete, the division of labor and the degree of cooperation have been effectively improved, but there are still some objective problems, such as the large consumption of resources, the tendency of homogenization of enterprises and the low added value of products.

The third stage can be called the stage of "industrial innovation agglomeration". In 2002, the Sixteen Party put forward the idea of "taking a new road to industrialization, emphasizing on relying on scientific and technological progress, and promoting the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure". The development of industrial clusters has entered a new stage of strategic adjustment. On the basis of the original "regional brand", industrial clusters began to strengthen their brand effect. Its main characteristics are: regional economy starts from "production oriented economy" to "demand oriented economy", from "extensive economy" to "intensive economy", and "imitation economy" turns to "innovative economy".

Guangdong province is an early developing area of textile industry in China, which has become the source of the development characteristics and competitiveness of the textile industry in the province.

It is understood that there are more than 30 industrial clusters with distinctive characteristics of specialization, scale and industrialization in Guangdong Province, which are mainly distributed in the Pearl River Delta and eastern Guangdong Province, accounting for about 80% of the total textile industry in Guangdong province.

For example, the Xiqiao textile industry in Guangdong has a long history and enjoys the reputation of "the world's best yarn" since ancient times. It is the first batch of famous Chinese fabrics awarded by the Federation of China textile industry.

According to Liang Quancai, mayor of Xiqiao Town, after many years of development and expansion, Xiqiao textile has emerged a number of modern leading textile enterprises with distinctive routes and strong R & D capability.

There are nearly 1000 textile enterprises and more than 60 thousand employees, 90% of which are private enterprises. The textile industry chain system of raw materials, weaving and dyeing and finishing has been formed. The annual output of various textile fabrics is 1 billion meters, which is the second largest textile production and sales base in China.

Xiqiao has become a professional textile industrial cluster with great influence both at home and abroad.

At present, Xiqiao has launched more than 10 thousand new fabric products every year, with an update rate of over 80% and an additional value of over 30%. More than 200 new products have been included in China's popular fabrics every year, and have firmly occupied the production and market supply of high-end fabrics in China.

Textile industry is an important traditional pillar industry in Shandong province.

The province has formed chain structured industrial systems including chemical fibers, cotton textiles, yarn dyed fabrics, garments and textile machinery.

By the end of 2010, there were 17 state-level industrial clusters in the province. The number of Enterprises above Designated Size accounted for about 40% of the total number of Enterprises above Designated Size in the province.

For example, the textile and garment industry in Shizhong District of Zaozhuang, Shandong, started in the 80s of last century.

In 2009, the district was awarded the "China knitted cultural shirt city" and the national textile industrial cluster by the China Federation of textile industry. In 2011, it was awarded the "China's knitted industrial super billion billion key cluster" by the China Federation of knitting industry.

Zaozhuang City Central District Deputy Secretary Xiu Ting told reporters that in 2011, the textile industry in the region achieved an increase of 18.6% in industrial added value, realized sales income of 11 billion 115 million yuan, profits 650 million yuan, and profits and taxes 1 billion 168 million yuan.

Production of clothing 695 million 440 thousand pieces, a year-on-year reduction of 9%; production of 58177 tons of cotton yarn, an increase of 26%; cloth 375 million 480 thousand meters, an increase of 35%; the completion of export delivery value of 230 million U. s.dollars, an increase of 6%; of which, self export earned foreign exchange 135 million U. S. dollars, accounting for 52% of the region's exports of foreign exchange.

Jiangsu is a major province of China's textile and clothing industry. Its industrial clusters have made outstanding contributions. By the end of 2010, there were 59 textile and garment industrial clusters in Jiangsu. Among them, 36 of the textile industry base counties (cities) and special towns (towns) identified by the China Textile Industry Association, 11 of the textile industry base counties (cities) identified by the Jiangsu Textile Industry Association, 7 of the characteristic cities, and 41 of the characteristic towns.

In the province's textile and garment industry cluster, South of Jiangsu accounted for 59%, the central Jiangsu region accounted for 23%, and Northern Jiangsu accounted for 18%.

After more than 30 years of development, the overall textile and garment industry cluster in the whole country is mainly concentrated in the economically developed coastal areas in the eastern coastal areas, mainly in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the Haixi region and the Bohai Delta, especially Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong and Guangdong five provinces.

In recent years, with the development of the central and Western economies, the textile and garment industry has gradually shifted to the central and western regions in a planned way, and has begun to form some relatively concentrated industries in the Midwest.

But overall, the five provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong and Fujian will still occupy a dominant position in our clothing production for a long time to come. In the short term, there will be no bigger changes in the production pattern of the garment industry.

In recent years, especially since the international financial crisis, the pressure of pformation and upgrading of the garment industry in the southeast coast has gradually increased. The production scale of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta region has stabilized, and the relocation of industries has begun. On the one hand, the level of Industrial Development has been speeded up, and one side has accelerated to the inland gradient pfer, especially in the central and western parts of China.

For example, Jiangxi, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan and other central and western regions, as well as Liaoning and other northeast areas, began to appear garment industry agglomeration.

However, judging from the absolute value of production, the central and western regions are far from being the main force to support the development of China's garment industry.

Coping with the challenges faced by industrial clusters

Although the domestic textile and garment industry cluster has been developing rapidly in recent years, the eastern coastal areas with relatively high level of agglomeration are increasingly under the pressure of resources, environment and independent innovation ability.

In terms of land resources, due to the increasing scarcity of land resources in coastal areas, and the strict control of land use index, land prices are rising rapidly, which limits the development of textile industry.

It is understood that the construction land of some cluster enterprises is leased, and there is no land use certificate. The enterprises do not dare to do further investment, which directly affects loan financing and investment and investment, which has become an important problem that restricts the development of enterprises.

In some clusters, a large number of backbone enterprises have moved out and industrial agglomeration has declined.

Meng Ping, vice president and Secretary General of Hangzhou women's clothing trade association, told reporters that the land used for business in Hangzhou is rather tense, and now the land cost is very high. Therefore, it is suggested that the production and processing part should be pferred to the eastern and western regions, or to the central part of the province, to retain the design marketing part locally.

In terms of funds, although some cluster enterprises have established financing guarantee institutions for SMEs, financing difficulties remain a common problem in clusters, which limits the development and promotion of SMEs.

Because the vast majority of domestic textile and garment industry clusters are small and medium-sized enterprises. If SMEs fail to develop, they will inevitably constrain the overall development of industrial clusters.

Although some enterprises have market, but lack of liquidity, they can not expand production.

Some enterprises want to carry out technological pformation, but they are unable to get loans because of their difficulty in implementing technical pformation funds.

In terms of labor force, "recruitment difficulty" is a major problem facing the textile and garment industry in recent years. In coastal areas, clusters are particularly prominent, skilled workers are scarce, and employment gap is relatively large.

Lin Shaodong, President of Wenzhou soma Clothing Co., Ltd., in an interview with our reporter, said that the per capita wage of the company's workers has exceeded 3000 yuan, even though such wages are still not easy to recruit, and now some enterprises are unable to get workers if they get rich.

Nowadays, environmental protection has more and more influence on the textile industry, especially the printing and dyeing industry in the cluster area.

In some places, strict sewage discharge standards are set up based on environmental protection and are obviously higher than national standards.

In many places, the key energy consuming enterprises signed the responsibility for energy conservation and consumption reduction, energy consumption reduction rate, COD and SO2 emissions as a binding one vote veto index.

In addition, in terms of independent innovation capability, although many clusters enhance their public services through the enhancement of public services, and enhance technological innovation and increase R & D input, the overall innovation capability of textile and garment industrial clusters needs to be improved.

In cluster enterprises, there are few enterprises with independent R & D capability. Most of the enterprises are still in the production mode of OEM processing and imitation processing. R & D investment accounts for a low proportion of sales revenue, and lack of professional talents in R & D design, resulting in low technical content, low added value, lack of core competitiveness and free intellectual property rights.

For example, according to statistics, at the end of 2010, the number of R & D personnel in Zhejiang textile industry cluster was only 78% in Guangdong, 58% in Jiangsu, 56% in Liaoning, and only 3.9% in the total number of middle and senior technical titles, which was lower than the national average level.

Faced with the bottlenecks encountered in the development, the pformation and upgrading of industrial clusters is imminent.

The practice of some industrial clusters in practical operation is commendable.

For example, at the end of the last century, Xiqiao, a famous Chinese fabric Town, established the Guangdong textile and textile engineering technology research center, the Southern Technology Innovation Center, which provides many services such as plain fabric development, color printing, jacquard design, digital printing, fashion trend research, product testing and certification for textile enterprises in the town.

At present, Xiqiao's textile industry continues to develop, forming a pattern of "innovation platform, trading market, industrial base, industrial chain, regional brand five in one, mutual support", and become an important high-end textile production base in China.

Sun Ruizhe believes that within the Xiqiao textile industrial cluster, the comparative advantage of factor cost is pforming to the comparative advantage of opportunity cost; resource consumption pattern and production form are being promoted effectively to green low-carbon form and life style leading form.

We also believe that with the adjustment, pformation and upgrading of the domestic textile and garment industry cluster, more and more clusters will gradually break through the development mode of spontaneous growth and resource driven development, and step into the new development track of rationalization of industrial structure.