China'S Footwear Export Base

From Guangzhou customs, as an important export base for footwear in China, the export of footwear in the Pearl River Delta has seen some new changes this year.

In the first five months of this year, 940 million pairs of shoes exported to the Pearl River Delta region dropped by 25.7%.

There are 2428 footwear export enterprises, a sharp decrease from 2331 in the same period last year.

However, the export prices of footwear increased by 45% over the same period last year, and the total value of exports reached US $3 billion 460 million, an increase of 8% over the same period last year.

The quantity has been reduced, the unit price has gone up, the total value is high, and the change in it is worth pondering.

In the Pearl River Delta region, shoemaking is an industry of index significance.

The change of this industry has always been the vane of the pformation of China's manufacturing industry at home and abroad.

At the beginning of this year, the footwear industry association of the Pearl River Delta region, the Asian Footwear Association, conducted a survey and found that in 2007, five thousand or six thousand shoe factories in Guangdong closed more than 1000, and the closing capacity of the enterprises accounted for 10% to 15% of the footwear industry in Guangdong Province, involving 150 thousand to 200 thousand employees.

This news has caused many domestic and foreign media attention. For a time, thousands of shoe enterprises failed or moved inland, becoming an important evidence for Guangdong's industrial relocation.

Now, in the past half a year, we have seen the other side of the Pearl River Delta shoe making industry.

Although half of the shoemaking enterprises have withdrawn from exports, the strength of the industry has not only weakened, but on the contrary.

Although there are fewer export enterprises, the scale of export enterprises has obviously improved, and some large enterprises still live very well.

In the same period last year, there were only two enterprises with over 100 million US dollars in export shoes, which increased to 4 this year.

The expansion of enterprise scale and the upgrading of technological content of enterprises are the survival status of the footwear industry in the Pearl River Delta and their survival.

Take thousands of shoe companies to close, and shut down thousands of enterprises, but most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises. Their capacity is not as good as that of a leading enterprise. Like Baocheng group, there are more than ten thousand employees in Dongguan alone, supplying more than 1/4 of middle and high grade sports shoes in the world.

Besides, in the face of the rapid increase in the cost of labor in the Pearl River Delta, and the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the impact of global inflation on consumption, coupled with the increase in raw material prices and the EU's anti-dumping, the export situation was not very optimistic. However, relying on the competitiveness of the medium and high grade products, it finally kept the momentum of falling volume.

Wu Zhenchang, chairman of Guangzhou Chuangxin shoes industry, whose export volume is over 100 million US dollars per year, said that the Pearl River Delta shoe manufacturers who quit the export market were mainly suppliers of low price shoes, which is also the reason why the unit price of export shoes has risen sharply.

The upgrading of industrial structure is the important development mission faced by the Pearl River Delta region, which is dominated by Shenzhen, Guangzhou.

At the plenary session of the provincial Party committee last year, Wang Yang, the Secretary of the provincial Party committee, made clear that the developed areas such as the Pearl River Delta should "move quickly and optimize the industrial structure" in the future.

The footwear industry is a representative of the labor-intensive industry. Where the industry goes, it becomes a focus of the Pearl River Delta industrial pformation.

At the beginning of this year, at the world footwear industry development forum held in Dongguan, Liang Yaowen, director of the Guangdong provincial foreign trade and Economic Cooperation Department, once made such a diagnosis to the shoemaking industry. "Only technology research and development is the only way out for shoemaking industry."

Now, hard data tell us that although there are a large number of shoe companies close in the PRD, and a large number of shoe companies are pulling out of the export market, the footwear industry in the PRD has not only declined, but is bigger and stronger, and the scale and scale of the industry have increased.

This shows that as long as there is a correct industrial policy orientation and a firm desire for survival in the face of adversity, the rate of industrial upgrading may be faster than we think, and the result may be better than we think.