There are no signs of recovery in China’s textile and apparel foreign trade orders, and the export situation in the second half of the year is not optimistic.
The 117th China Import and Export Fair (hereinafter referred to as the “Canton Fair”) will end today (5th). Many textile and garment exhibitors said in an interview with reporters on May 4 that the transaction volume of this Canton Fair was not high. Very good, orders have decreased, and the trend of the textile and garment industry moving to Southeast Asia and other regions is becoming increasingly obvious.
“Buyers have pushed prices too hard and have been unable to accept many orders. Our transactions at this Canton Fair have decreased, and there is an obvious trend of orders moving to Southeast Asia. We have not set up factories overseas for the time being, and the impact is still relatively large. The monthly wages of workers in Southeast Asia are generally The monthly salary of our workers is about 500 to 600 US dollars, and customers are accelerating the pace of transferring orders to Southeast Asia.” Lin Hua (pseudonym), the relevant person in charge of a textile and garment export company in Hangzhou, was interviewed by this reporter Having said that, he left the Canton Fair early before it ended and rushed to Hong Kong to attend another meeting.
Zhou Xiaonan, deputy general manager of Huamei Thread Industry Co., Ltd., said in an interview with reporters: “Recently, labor costs and raw material prices have been relatively stable, and our quotations for polyester sewing thread, rayon embroidery thread and other products have not increased significantly. The trend of textile product orders shifting to Southeast Asia is not as obvious as that of clothing companies. On the contrary, as clothing and other orders are accelerating to shift to Southeast Asia, the orders from Southeast Asian customers for purchasing line products from us have increased, but the overall market is still sluggish. These days, come to inquire There are not many overseas purchasers with high prices, especially the number of customers from Russia and other regions has decreased significantly, and the number of customers in Southeast Asia is okay.”
Indicating that they have factories overseas has become one of the methods used by textile and apparel companies to attract business at this Canton Fair. At the booth of Zhejiang Fuxi Textile Co., Ltd., a billboard lists details of domestic factories, factories in Cambodia and factories in Myanmar. Suzhou Hengrun Import and Export Co., Ltd. also used pictures and texts on its booth to tell customers that it has a processing factory in Cambodia. The person in charge of the company said that customers are more willing to place orders in Cambodian factories.
Statistics show that in the first quarter of this year, my country’s clothing exports experienced dramatic fluctuations. They fell by 12.5% in January, surged by 99.4% in February, and fell by 35.4% again in March. The cumulative clothing exports for the whole quarter were US$35.79 billion. A slight increase of only 2% year-on-year. At the same time, Vietnam’s textile and apparel exports are growing rapidly. In February 2015, Vietnam’s textile and apparel exports reached US$1.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 43.5%, marking the 24th consecutive month of year-on-year growth. From January to February this year, the cumulative export value was US$3.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 15.8%, the highest value for the same period in history. Wang Qianjin’s analysis pointed out that the acceleration of Vietnam’s garment exports is partly due to the country’s free trade agreement negotiations, such as the TPP (involving the US and Japanese markets), the customs union between Vietnam and the EU, and Vietnam and Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. , further enhancing the competitiveness of Vietnam’s textile and apparel industries.
Due to the accelerated transfer of mid- and low-end textiles and clothing to Southeast Asia and the rising domestic labor costs, factories in the Pearl River Delta and other regions have been in trouble or even closed down.
However, the domestic textile and apparel industry and the Southeast Asian textile and apparel industry are not purely competitive. Zhang Xian, secretary-general of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles, said that since the establishment of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, ASEAN has become one of the fastest growing regions for China’s textile and apparel exports to the world. In 2013, ASEAN surpassed Japan for the first time and became China’s third largest textile and apparel export market. In 2014, China’s exports of textiles and clothing to ASEAN were US$36.1 billion, an increase of 5.5%, and China’s imports of textiles and clothing from ASEAN were US$3.9 billion, an increase of 20%.
At present, ASEAN is China’s largest yarn export market and fabric export market. Calculated by a single country, Vietnam is China’s largest fabric export destination. Zhang Xian said that in terms of labor costs, ASEAN countries have obvious comparative advantages over China. In order to make full use of the cost advantages, tariff preferences and cotton price advantages of Southeast Asian countries and adapt to changes in importers’ procurement strategies, many Chinese companies have implemented successful production capacity transfers and overseas layouts, transforming the competitive relationship between China and ASEAN countries into win-win cooperation. Relationship.
Chinese textile companies are accelerating their overseas layout. Rainbow and Esquel Group have set up cotton spinning bases and garment processing bases in Vietnam, while Hongdou and Shenzhou Group have established export processing zones and garment processing bases in Cambodia.
