Fan Jianping Said At The China Textile Roundtable Forum That The Textile Industry Will Meet The Challenge Again

The eighth annual meeting of the China Textile Roundtable Forum was held in Beijing today. Chief economist and researcher of the National Information Center Fan Jianping At the meeting, he said that there might be three historic transitions in China in 2012 spin The industry brings a series of challenges.

The following is the full text of the speech:

In 2013, we saw many difficulties. However, entrepreneurs all over the world actually envy our Chinese enterprises. In addition to the external demand market, you also have a huge domestic demand market market Its growth rate is among the best in the world. Therefore, the whole world envies our Chinese enterprises very much. However, in 2012, I summarized that there might be three historical transitions in China: the first time in 2012, China's labor force saw a net decrease of 3.45 million people for the first time. In the past, we have always said that the demographic dividend may end. However, the growth rate of labor force has slowed down in the past few years. In 2012, there has been a net decrease. From 2012, this trend should be said to last until 2034 at least. At this stage, it can be said that in terms of our textile industry, solving the labor we need may pose some challenges to our future business in terms of both the total amount and quality.

The second historic turning point, of course, when we say that the reduction of labor force is not necessarily a bad thing, it will bring about the second major turning point of our country. That is, for the first time in more than 30 years, the growth rate of urban and rural residents' income has exceeded the growth rate of GDP. From 1978 to 2011, the average annual growth rate of our country's GDP was 9.9%, and the average annual growth rate of urban and rural residents' income was 7.4%. That is to say, over the past 30 years, GDP was 9.9%, and the income was 7.4%, 2.5 percentage points less. After more than 30 years of accumulation, the proportion of residents' income in GDP has continued to decline. I can even say, because I wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China that our proportion was even lower than before the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, it was said that the Soviet Union engaged in an arms race, which made the lives of the people very hard, and did not squeeze the income of the people to such a low proportion as that of our country. However, it is really not the policy, but the market. The labor force is now slowly decreasing, and the supply and demand of the labor market have promoted the growth of our urban and rural residents' income in 2012. The growth rate of wage income last year was more than 12%, which has driven the main force of our urban and rural residents' per capita income and per capita disposable income as a whole. In addition, depending on transfer payment, it is impossible to give more proportion to farmers this year. So we say that this turning point has been achieved not by the government, but mainly by the market.

The third driving factor is that our country has been an investment led economic growth model for a long time. The year 2012 has reversed, and our consumption has become the first driving factor in economic growth. Although it is slightly higher than the investment, this turning point may be irreversible under normal circumstances. Therefore, China's per capita GDP level has now reached the level of upper middle income countries. We are moving towards high-income countries. China is now in the process of transforming from investment oriented to consumption oriented. 2012 is likely to be the first year, because under normal circumstances, a country's consumption should be the first driver of economic growth.

Therefore, these three transitions are not only the return of history, but also a farewell to our past growth model. For the textile industry, when the consumption growth driven by the growth of people's income becomes the first mode of economic pull and the era of contribution comes, the prospect of our textile industry will only become better and better. However, I would also like to say that it is also consumption, and people have money. From our current observation, it is found that the proportion of medical consumption is not the fastest growing part in the income control process of urban and rural residents, but the proportion is declining. In the past two years, there are two things with the fastest growth. The first is food expenditure. Originally, after a country's income increased, the Engel coefficient should have declined. But every year in our country, the price of agricultural products rose more than CPI, causing our country's Engel coefficient to rise instead of decline. In the future, this situation should not be too long. Under normal circumstances, the Engel coefficient should decline with the increase of consumption level. {page_break}

Another abnormal phenomenon is that the proportion of our living in the middle of consumer spending is rising too fast. The residential price has always risen more than the CPI. For example, last year it reached 6%, and our CPI was only 2.6. In addition, the proportion of others has decreased. Therefore, this change in the consumption structure, from my long-term research on consumption, is an abnormal structural change, not a normal one. Then, in the process of changing from a normal, upper middle income country to a high-income country in the future, it should be said that the proportion of clothing consumption will rise first and then decline, especially in the acceleration stage of urbanization. If we look at Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore at the same GDP level as ours, the proportion of their clothing consumption in the total consumption increased by 7 percentage points first, and then slowly decreased, what is the main reason? It doesn't matter if you wear rags in the countryside. You should dress up when you go to town. Therefore, after his income increases, he can still afford to buy some clothes first, so why is the proportion of clothing rising in the early stages of urbanization. Our country is just at such a historical stage. A large number of migrant workers, the new generation of migrant workers, are different from the past. Their clothes are not different from those of city girls and boys. They are also pursuing the development mode of the city.

Therefore, if we control the price of agricultural products well, 2013 may also be my personal hope. When people get rich, the first step should be that clothing consumption should rise first, which should last for nearly ten years before falling, This is the historical experience of Asian countries, probably like this.

In this case, our clothing consumption is very closely linked with our textile and clothing industry, which is how we can cut as much as possible in the middle of this consumption cake, and can become sustainable development. We still need our textile industry to transfer our high standards of international service to the same requirements for our domestic needs. I hardly buy clothes in China. When I buy shirts, I buy them on business trips in Hong Kong and Europe. When I am very angry, I have to nail them again when I buy them in China. Why can the inspection meet the most stringent standards when exporting? Why can't our domestic sales meet such standards? In the future, we will say that food has learned something from the past. It is easy to fool people in China until they finally play with themselves. Our textile and clothing industry, and any industry in our home textile industry must be good at domestic consumers and respect them as more demanding consumers than Europeans and Americans, so that we can form a virtuous circle. Social responsibility starts with the integration of domestic sales standards with international standards. thank you!