The Textile Industry Cluster In Coastal Areas Is Facing A Crisis Of Transformation And Upgrading

Since 2002, China textile industry The Federation (formerly China Textile Industry Association) has carried out the pilot work of textile industry cluster development. Now, the pilot textile cluster areas have grown from the original 38 counties and towns to 175 cities and counties (by the end of 2010), whose textile industry cluster economy accounts for more than 80% of the total textile economy of the country. It can be said that the textile industry cluster area, which is dominated by the regional economy of cities (counties) and towns, has become an important part of China's textile and clothing industry with its vigorous economic vitality.

　　 Growing industrial cluster economy

After the reform and opening up, China's textile and clothing industry has formed a huge industrial scale in the context of the reform and opening up policy and the international industrial structure adjustment, relying on the comparative advantage of factor costs, through industrial supporting, national retreat and private advance, and industrial concentration improvement. Sun Ruizhe, vice president of China Textile Industry Federation, believes that with the growth of domestic textile and clothing industry, the development of textile and clothing industry cluster has gone through three stages:

In the first stage, from the reform and opening up to the early 1990s, regional economic development entered the stage of "original industrial agglomeration". At this stage, relying on the coastal fairs and trading markets, textile and clothing manufacturing enterprises present a situation of centralized distribution, but the degree of industrial relevance is small, and the coordinated operation function is not perfect, presenting a fragmented state of "centralization rather than clustering".

The second stage is from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. The textile and clothing industry cluster entered the stage of "industrial association and agglomeration". The "regional brands" gradually formed, the industrial chain supporting facilities tended to be complete, and the degree of professional division and collaboration effectively improved. However, there are still objective problems such as high resource consumption, serious homogenization tendency of enterprise operation, and low added value of products.

The third stage can be called the "industrial innovation agglomeration" stage. Since the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2002 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 round of strategic adjustment. Based on the original "regional brand", The main characteristics of constantly strengthening its own brand effect are as follows: the regional economy has begun to shift from "production oriented economy" to "demand oriented economy", from "extensive economy" to "intensive economy", and from "imitation economy" to "innovation economy".

Guangdong Province is an earlier area to develop textile industry clusters in China, which has become the source of development characteristics and industrial competitiveness of the textile industry in Guangdong Province. It is understood that Guangdong Province now has more than 30 industrial clusters with distinctive textile specialization, scale and industrialization characteristics, which are mainly distributed in the Pearl River Delta and eastern Guangdong, and their economic aggregate accounts for about 80% of Guangdong's textile industry.

For example, the textile industry of Xiqiao in Guangdong has a long history. It has enjoyed the reputation of "the best yarn in the world" since ancient times, and is the first batch of famous Chinese fabric towns awarded by the China Textile Industry Federation. According to Liang Quancai, the mayor of Xiqiao Town, after years of development and growth, Xiqiao Textile has emerged a number of modern leading textile enterprises with distinctive lines and strong R&D and innovation capabilities. At present, there are nearly 1000 textile enterprises with more than 60000 employees, 90% of whom are private enterprises. A textile industry chain system has been formed that integrates raw materials, weaving, dyeing and finishing. With an annual output of 1 billion meters of various textile fabrics, it is the second largest textile production and sales base in China. Xiqiao has become a professional textile industry cluster with great influence at home and abroad by virtue of its strong textile industry foundation of "thousands of factories, thousands of stores, thousands of machines and billions of meters of cloth".

At present, Xiqiao launches more than 10000 new fabric products every year, with a renewal rate of more than 80% and an added value rate of more than 30%; Every year, more than 200 new products of popular fabrics in China are shortlisted, firmly occupying 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 a chain structure industrial system including chemical fiber, cotton textile, yarn dyed fabric, clothing, textile machinery, etc. By the end of 2010, there were 17 national industrial clusters in the province, and the number of enterprises above designated size accounted for about 40% of the number of enterprises above designated size in the textile industry of the province. {page_break}

For example, the textile industry in Shizhong District, Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province clothing The industry started in the 1980s. In 2009, the zone was awarded the title of "China's Famous City for Knitting Cultural Shirts" by the China Textile Industry Federation, a national textile industry cluster; In 2011, it was awarded the "Key Cluster of China's Knitting Industry Exceeding 10 Billion Yuan" by the China Knitting Industry Federation. Xiuting, Deputy Secretary of Shizhong District Committee of Zaozhuang City, introduced to the reporter that in 2011, the textile industry in the whole district achieved an 18.6% increase in industrial added value, sales revenue of 11.115 billion yuan, profits of 650 million yuan, and profits and taxes of 1.168 billion yuan. 695.44 million pieces of clothing were produced, a year-on-year decrease of 9%; 58177 tons of cotton yarn were produced, up 26%; 375.48 million meters of cloth, an increase of 35%; The export delivery value was 230 million US dollars, up 6%; Among them, the self operated export earned foreign exchange of 135 million US dollars, accounting for 52% of the total export earned foreign exchange in the region.

Jiangsu is a major textile and clothing province in China, and its industrial clusters have made outstanding contributions. By the end of 2010, Jiangsu had 59 textile and clothing industrial clusters, including 36 textile industry base counties (cities) and characteristic cities (towns) recognized by the China Textile Industry Association, 11 textile industry base counties (cities), 7 characteristic cities, and 41 characteristic towns recognized by the Jiangsu Textile Industry Association. In the textile and clothing industry cluster of the province, southern Jiangsu accounted for 59%, central Jiangsu 23%, and northern Jiangsu 18%.

After more than 30 years of development, as a whole, the national textile and clothing industry clusters are mainly concentrated in the economically developed coastal areas in the east, mainly in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the Haixi region and the Bohai Sea Delta, especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong and Guangdong. In recent years, with the economic development of the central and western regions, the textile and clothing industry has begun to shift gradually to the central and western regions in a planned way, and has begun to form some relatively concentrated industries in the central and western regions. However, on the whole, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong and Fujian provinces will still dominate China's garment production for a long time in the future. In the short term, the production pattern of the garment industry will not change much.

In recent years, especially since the international financial crisis, the garment industry in the southeast coast is facing Transformation and upgrading The pressure gradually increased, the production scale in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta has become stable, and the industry has begun to reposition: on the one hand, accelerate the upgrading of industrial development level, on the other hand, accelerate the gradient transfer to inland, especially in some parts of the central and western regions, new industrial clusters have begun to appear. For example, the clothing industry has begun to cluster in Jiangxi, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan and other central and western regions as well as Liaoning and other northeast regions. However, in terms of absolute output, the central and western regions are far from becoming the main force supporting the development of China's clothing industry.

　　 Responding to the challenges faced by industrial clusters

Although the domestic textile and clothing industry cluster has achieved rapid development in the past few years, in the eastern coastal areas with relatively high agglomeration level, it is increasingly constrained by the pressure of resources, environment, independent innovation ability, etc.

In terms of land resources, due to the increasing shortage of land resources in coastal areas and the strict control of land use indicators by the state, the rapid rise of land prices has restricted the development of the textile industry. It is understood that some cluster enterprises use rent instead of requisition for construction land. Without land use certificate, enterprises dare not make further investment, which directly affects loan financing and investment attraction, becoming an important problem restricting the development of enterprises. As a result, a large number of key enterprises have moved out of some clusters, and the degree of industrial agglomeration has declined. Meng Ping, vice president and secretary-general of Hangzhou Women's Wear Chamber of Commerce, once said to reporters that there is a shortage of land for enterprises in Hangzhou today. In addition, the cost of land is very high now. Therefore, someone suggested that the production and processing part should be transferred to the eastern and western regions, or the neighboring central provinces, and the design and marketing part should be retained locally.

In terms of funds, although some cluster enterprises have established financing guarantee institutions to serve SMEs, "financing difficulties" are still common problems in clusters, which limit the development and promotion of SMEs. Because the vast majority of domestic textile and clothing industry clusters are small and medium-sized enterprises, if small and medium-sized enterprises can not be developed, it is bound to restrict the overall development of industrial clusters. Although some enterprises have a market for their products, they lack liquidity and are unable to expand production. Some enterprises hope to carry out technological transformation, but they are unable to obtain loans, and it is difficult to implement funds for technological transformation.

In terms of labor force, "difficulty in recruitment" is the main problem faced by the textile and clothing industry in recent years, which is particularly prominent in some coastal clusters. The lack of skilled workers and large employment gap of enterprises are common manifestations. It is more difficult for enterprises in the east to recruit workers than those in the central and western regions, and it is more difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises than large enterprises. Lin Shaodong, president of Wenzhou Soma Clothing Co., Ltd., once said in an interview with our reporter that the per capita wage of the company's workers has exceeded 3000 yuan. Even with such a wage, it is still difficult to recruit workers. Now some enterprises are in a situation where they cannot recruit workers even if they have money.

Nowadays, environmental protection has an increasing impact on the textile industry in cluster areas, especially the printing and dyeing industry. Some places have formulated very strict sewage discharge standards based on environmental protection, which are significantly higher than the national standards. In many places, key energy consuming enterprises are assessed for signing energy saving and consumption reduction responsibility certificates, energy consumption reduction rates, COD and SO2 emissions as binding one vote veto indicators. {page_break}

In addition, in terms of independent innovation ability, although many clusters have improved their innovation ability by strengthening public services, plus advantageous enterprises through technological transformation and increasing R&D investment, the overall innovation ability of textile and clothing industry clusters still needs to be improved. Among cluster enterprises, there are not many enterprises with independent R&D capability. Most enterprises are still in the production mode of OEM and imitation processing. The proportion of R&D investment in sales revenue is low, and there are insufficient R&D and design professionals, resulting in less product technology, 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 with a population of one million was only 78% in Guangdong, 58% in Jiangsu and 56% in Liaoning, respectively. The total number of personnel with senior technical titles accounted for only 3.9%, lower than the national average.

Facing the bottleneck in development, the transformation and upgrading of industrial clusters is imminent. The practice of some industrial clusters in actual operation is commendable. For example, Xiqiao, a famous fabric town in China, established the Guangdong Textile Fabric Engineering Technology Research Center - South Technology Innovation Center at the end of the last century, providing many services for textile enterprises in the town, such as plain fabric development, color separation printing, jacquard design, digital printing, fashion trend research, product testing and certification, and opening the road of "prospering textile through science and technology".

At present, the textile industry of Xiqiao has continued to develop, forming a pattern of "innovation platform, trading market, industrial base, industrial chain and regional brands in one, mutually supporting", and becoming an important high-end textile fabric production base in China.

Sun Ruizhe believes that within the Xiqiao textile industry cluster, the comparative advantage of factor cost is transforming to the comparative advantage of opportunity cost; The form of resource consumption and production and manufacturing is being effectively upgraded to a green low-carbon form and a lifestyle leading form.

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