In the 1980s and 1990s, the textile industry in the Yangtze River Delta was one of the first industries to develop.
At that time, the foreign trade market had just opened, and the supply of textiles exceeded demand. However, the process of weaving cloth with water-jet looms was relatively simple. In the beginning, a family in the village bought a few machines and freed up a space at home to do the work, making a lot of money. Other people in the village saw that they could make money and imitated him. When you make money, you buy machines to expand production. Everyone expands production, and production capacity increases, forming one cluster after another. This is what Made in China looked like in the first place.
Many factories are located in villages. When driving through these villages, you can often see gray fabrics piled on the roadside. But this year is different from previous years in that there are more gray fabrics piled up.
A history that is difficult to copy
The rise of textile industry clusters in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions is full of color of the times and cannot be replicated domestically.
First of all, at that time, China had just reformed and opened up, and resources were extremely scarce. The demand for textile exports was strong. Basically, whatever was produced could be sold. Such a demand situation is unlikely to occur in the short term.
Secondly, at that time, the speed of information circulation was not very fast, and most of the money was made through an information gap. There were few people making cloth at that time, and the prices were not so transparent, so profits were naturally possible.
Finally, China was still in a state of exploration in terms of economy and law at that time, and many policies had not yet been finalized. Everyone was rushing forward, but many operations are no longer feasible now.
The current situation of overcapacity
In 2017, the Yangtze River Delta region began a large-scale liquidation of production capacity. A large number of scattered production capacities withdrew from the stage of history, but this also caused a series of chain reactions.
The development of traditional textile clusters is more about chance and is difficult to copy. However, there is no way. There are only a few industries that can solve the problem of large employment population and low conditions, and textile is one of them. Therefore, if the central and western regions want to develop their economy, the first thing that comes to mind is textiles.
However, as China has developed so far, environmental protection standards have been tightened and the textile industry has been basically improved. Low-end production capacity currently solves more employment problems than creating and accumulating capital.
Some areas closer to traditional textile clusters are like Northern Jiangsu and Anhui. Because of the location advantage industries, they can choose to reject low-end production capacity during the production capacity transfer process. However, most of them have a weaker foundation and the economy is in urgent need of development. Regions cannot control so much, and this further aggravates overcapacity.
The future of “If you don’t advance, you will retreat”
“Now we are just holding on to production. In the past two years, we have seen more and more colleagues withdraw from the textile industry. We are getting older, and the next generation is not willing to take orders. We may have to close the factory before long. “This year, the person in charge of a weaving enterprise with 100 looms and a factory in his own village. The looms only produce pongee and polyester taffeta. Said by the editor.
In recent years, various textile clusters have been promoting the transformation and upgrading of the industry in a planned way, improving technology, management, and concepts. In the competition, the industry has developed rapidly and has begun to seize some of the products that were originally used. Developed countries have a monopoly on the cake.
But on the other hand, as mentioned above, there are a number of factories, maybe because of concepts, maybe because they don’t want to take risks or make troubles. However, if you sail against the current, if you don’t advance, you will retreat. In an industry with serious involution like textiles, if you stop developing, what you will lose is likely to be the future, or even the present.
Going back to the beginning of the article, this year due to external demand and production capacity expansion, many textile companies are having a hard time with extremely low profits, while those factories that only produce conventional products are facing more serious homogeneity challenges. Once the price of raw materials increases, they may have to sell cloth at a loss. Therefore, it can be seen with the naked eye that the number of such factories has become less and less in the past two years. Perhaps in a few years, people will only be able to find their presence in memory, but this is also the case in China.�It is an indelible corner in the development of the textile industry for decades.
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