Ten Years Of WTO Entry: Vision And Loss Of The Dream Of Textile Power

"A billion pairs of socks for a plane", this may be about China The most popular metaphor of textile industry. In the past ten years after China's entry into the WTO, China's textile industry has undoubtedly passed a "golden period" in terms of quantity growth. However, judging from the quality of growth, there may be a question mark about how much gold content is.

"Looking back, the cloud blocks the way home, and looking back, there are many thorns." Looking back ten years after China's accession to the WTO, after the baptism of the global economic crisis, the impact of trade frictions, and the promotion of rising costs, China's textile industry has embarked on the path of transformation and upgrading from "competing for costs and prices", with the dream of "becoming a textile power".

High growth textile industry suffers from depression

The textile industry was widely regarded as a promising industry when China joined the WTO. At that time, many people believed that the textile industry would be the "biggest winner".

In 2002, the first year of China's accession to the WTO, China's textile industry Industry The three major economic indicators, gross output value, profit and export, all hit a new record. By the end of 2010, the total industrial output value (current price) of enterprises above designated size in the national textile industry had reached 4761.17 billion yuan, a cumulative increase of 4.4 times over 2000, with an average annual growth of 18.3%; The total profit reached 287.5 billion yuan, an increase of 8.7 times over 2000, with an average annual growth of 25.6%.

The reporter learned from the China Textile Import and Export Chamber of Commerce that, according to the statistics of the World Trade Organization, China's textile and clothing exports accounted for 15.6% of global exports in 2001, 31.7% of global exports in 2009, and it is expected to reach 33% in 2010, becoming the world's largest textile and clothing exporter.

However, in the "high-speed growth" and "the largest country" achievement Behind the single, the textile industry is experiencing pain. Gao Yong, vice president of China Textile Industry Federation, said that since May this year, the operating efficiency of the textile industry has declined. Since October (August for some products), domestic demand has also declined due to the impact of the international financial crisis and domestic inflation.

The fluctuation of raw material price is the main reason for labor pains. As an important raw material of the textile industry, the price of cotton has experienced a "roller coaster" market since last year. The highest price of cotton has climbed to 30000 yuan per ton, and now it has dropped to more than 19000 yuan per ton. As a result, textile enterprises are in trouble. This year is considered to be a more difficult year than the 2008 financial crisis.

Some analysts said that the cost burden of the textile industry has not changed much in the past decade in terms of the proportion of cost to income. At the beginning of China's accession to the WTO in 2001, the industry's main business cost accounted for 88% of the main business income. By 2010, the proportion was 87.79%. However, the enterprise's cost risk control ability has not been improved overall and substantially, becoming the "old" textile industry faced problem ”。

In addition, the global economic recovery is slow and full of variables, increasing the uncertainty of textile industry growth. Due to the lack of confidence in the future development of the industry and export prospects, some enterprises have to reduce the volume of clothing trade or transfer to other industries.

In fact, as early as 2008, similar scenes were staged. At that time, the textile industry experienced its first negative growth in many years. The global financial crisis led to a sharp decline in textile export demand. The operating rate of textile enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was only more than 40% at the end of October of that year.

"The textile industry has experienced many market fluctuations in recent years, and the ups and downs in the market economy are inevitable, but it is not allowed to stop production when risks arise." The person in charge of a large textile enterprise in Shandong told reporters that enterprises should have measures to deal with risks such as arbitrage to reduce losses relatively, rather than waiting for "starvation".

In fact, in the face of market fluctuations, the characteristics of the high growth textile industry "large but not strong" have emerged. According to the materials provided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to the Economic Information Daily, the textile industry has accumulated a series of contradictions and problems while experiencing rapid growth in the past decade. In particular, due to the large scale of the textile industry, low concentration, the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, and large differences in their development levels, some contradictions and problems are still relatively prominent.

Trade frictions follow closely

In 2004, in order to deal with Sino US trade frictions, the Chinese government and industry departments organized a delegation to contact with the United States. Gao Yong, who participated in the negotiation, clearly remembered that from senior officials of the US government to industry associations and enterprises, they all said with one voice that the number of employed people in the US textile industry was decreasing at the rate of 4000 to 6000 every week, while the number of employed people was U.S.A The biggest politics. {page_break}

What European and American developed countries may not want to face up to is that China's textile industry across the ocean is suffering huge losses due to trade protection measures. In the Record of Zhu Rongji's Speech, Zhu Rongji recalled that due to the discriminatory textile quota measures of the United States, China "destroyed 10 million spindles and 1.2 million people lost their jobs, which caused us great difficulties. Now the most difficult state-owned enterprises are textile enterprises."

After China joined WTO in 2001, the export of textiles and clothing began to grow at a high speed. Products such as socks increased more than ten times every year. The developed countries in Europe and the United States regarded this as a "sock battle" and began to take "special protection measures" for Chinese textiles (In case of a surge in imports of certain products, importing countries or economies can take some urgent trade restrictions).

According to the provisions of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, since 2005, the textile and clothing quota system, which has lasted for more than 40 years, has been abolished, and the textile and clothing export has entered the "quota free era". In 2005, China's textile exports surged, and various indicators of the textile industry reached a new high.

However, after the abolition of textile and clothing quotas, Europe and the United States did not give up imposing restrictions on Chinese products. It was not until January 1, 2008 that the European Union fully opened up the Chinese textile and clothing market, but for China textile The implementation of anti-dumping, technical barriers and other measures has not been interrupted.

In July 2006, the US Department of Commerce launched an anti-dumping investigation on polyester staple fiber imported from China. The case involved about US $65 million in export value and nearly 100 Chinese enterprises. The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles at that time designated this case as "the first major case of textile anti-dumping between China and the United States".

Ten years after China's entry into WTO, textile and clothing industry was the first industry subject to trade protection restrictions, and it 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 anti-dumping cases against China's textile and clothing from abroad, and more than 20 safeguard measures and special safeguard cases. In addition to Europe and the United States, Turkey, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, South Africa, Mexico and many other developing countries also frequently use various trade remedies to restrict China's textile and clothing exports.

According to the analysis of the Bureau of Industry Damage Investigation of the Ministry of Commerce, after the quota system was abolished, the textile trade did not really realize market liberalization, but was replaced by a series of new forms of trade restrictions such as labor standards, special safeguard measures, green barriers, environmental barriers, and technical barriers.

Trade frictions in textile and clothing have occurred year after year. What is different is that China has responded more calmly. Gao Yong believes that trade frictions have not restricted the export growth of China's textiles and clothing, and the government, industry departments and enterprises have strengthened their coping ability in this process.

The relevant person in charge of the China Textile Import and Export Chamber of Commerce told the Economic Information Daily that a complete response process and mechanism have been gradually formed, and good results have been achieved in many key cases. Among them, the EU chemical fiber cloth anti-dumping case was awarded the unprecedented market economy status of 26 enterprises; The anti-dumping case of polyester staple fiber in the United States obtained a rare zero tax rate; The anti-dumping case of Indian silk and satin cancelled the investigation of one category of products; For the first time, the cases of Turkey and Brazil were partially separated tax rate adjudication.

Transformation and upgrading are imminent

After a decade of rapid growth in scale, the era of "low cost, high growth" in China's textile industry is passing, and some insiders even lament that the golden age of the textile industry has ended.

Wang Tiankai, president of China Textile Industry Federation, believes that during the "12th Five Year Plan" period, the textile industry is facing increasing constraints on labor, resources and environment, and it is impossible to continue to "fight cost and price".

"After three decades of rapid growth, China's economy has begun to face the problem of Lewis inflection point. As a labor-intensive industry, the textile industry has brought heavy burdens to textile enterprises due to the increase of labor costs." {page_break}

Gu Qingliang, a professor of Donghua University, believes that the growth model that used to rely on low labor costs and high work intensity to gain competitive advantages has been difficult to continue, and enterprises need to find new growth points.

China's labor cost advantage is weakening, and textile and clothing orders are increasingly transferred to Southeast Asia and other regions. According to the data of the US Department of Commerce, from January to August 2011, the cumulative imports of cotton products from Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia increased by 3.35%, 0.97% and 2.45% respectively year on year, while the cumulative imports of cotton products from China decreased by 16.61% year on year.

As domestic resource and environmental constraints continue to intensify, the country's requirements for energy conservation and emission reduction will continue to improve. The textile industry must place "low-carbon, energy-saving, green and environmental protection" in a more important position. Gu Qingliang believes that textile enterprises face greater "green" pressure. If enterprises want to participate in the global textile market competition, they must adapt to the higher international environmental protection and carbon labeling threshold. At the same time, domestic environmental protection standards for textile enterprises are also increasingly high. Therefore, achieving sustainable development is another difficult problem faced by textile enterprises.

At the same time, European and American countries seize the market through technological innovation market Share, China's textile industry is facing the "double whammy" between emerging economies and developed economies. According to the analysis of the Industrial Damage Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce, developed countries can gradually transform the textile industry into a technology intensive industry by taking advantage of their technological advantages, and regain their share in the textile market. With the support of advanced patented technology and well-known trademarks, the export of textile industry in developed countries has developed from product export, capital export to brand export. By controlling brands, we can control the high-end market of international textile and clothing industry.

Compared with European and American countries, China's textile industry has a significant gap in technology and brand building. According to the materials provided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the independent originality of core technologies in the domestic textile industry is still relatively weak. The independent research and development of some key technologies, such as high-performance fibers, high-performance industrial textiles, high-end textile machines, is relatively slow, and some core technologies are still monopolized by developed countries. Self owned brand construction is still a weak link in the textile industry, and there is a lack of truly famous brands with international influence. The proportion of self owned brand exports is still low, the international marketing network is still in the hands of import buyers, and China's textile export enterprises still have a low control over the international market.

Jiang Weizhen, the president of the Textile Branch of the Business Agency, said in an interview with the Economic Information Daily earlier that with the advent of the high cost era and the increasingly normalization of the high cost era, the profit space is being squeezed. If an enterprise wants to develop, it cannot rely on cheap processing to obtain meager profits. Innovate in technology, use more substitutes to enrich textile materials and relieve the pressure of high cotton prices. From the development of new products and brand building, truly improving the added value of products is the basis for the rapid development of enterprise transformation and upgrading.

Ten years after joining the WTO, the textile industry has been pursuing the dream of becoming a "powerful country". In the next decade, the "textile power" is still the biggest vision for the development of the industry. It is understood that the orientation of the 12th Five Year Plan for the textile industry is to adhere to transformation and upgrading, strengthen independent innovation, brand building, talent training, energy conservation and emission reduction, and lay the foundation for becoming a textile power.

According to the relevant officials of the Consumer Goods Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the development of the textile industry during the "12th Five Year Plan" will adhere to the main line of "accelerating the transformation of the development mode", which is mainly reflected in five aspects: first, focusing on the transformation from the expansion of weight to the upgrading of quality, second, focusing on the transformation from the integrity of the industrial chain to the upgrading of the value chain, and third, focusing on the transformation from the eastern led to the coordinated development of the eastern, western and central regions, The fourth is to focus on the transformation from international market development to expanding domestic demand, and the fifth is to focus on the transformation from traditional industries to traditional industries and new economic growth points.

Ten years after joining the WTO, although the textile industry has been shrouded in the clouds of multiple adverse factors, such as low external demand, rising costs, and order transfer, the "transformation and upgrading" in which is agitated has made many insiders full of confidence in the future.

The relevant person in charge of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles said that the textile and clothing industry plays an important role in the development of China's national economy, and textile and clothing exports still have a bright prospect in the next decade and beyond. Although the export scale may be reduced, it is hard to shake the position of the first export in the world. Moreover, more export products will shift from OEM (processing and production) to ODM (design and production), product structure and quality will be improved, and the industry will increase product design, research and development of surface and auxiliary materials, production process improvement, supporting logistics, brand development and expansion of overseas marketing channels, pushing China's textile and clothing exports from a big country to a powerful country.