In The Changing Situation, We Should Firmly Grasp The Basic Demand Of The International Market, And The Textile Industry Should Strengthen Its Export Competitiveness

In the face of major changes in the internal and external development environment, the central government proposed "gradually forming a new development pattern with the domestic big cycle as the main body and the domestic and international dual cycle promoting each other". The textile industry has also ushered in a new opportunity of transformation and development, which takes domestic demand as the guidance and supply side structural reform as the main line.

After years of development, China's textile industry has become the industry with the largest production scale, the most complete industrial chain and the most complete categories in the world, basically realizing the goal of becoming a powerful textile country. Following the market orientation, textile enterprises continue to explore the domestic and international markets, and actively promote the transformation and upgrading, adjust the industrial structure, and increase the proportion of domestic sales. Expanding domestic market and stabilizing export share are the development direction of textile enterprises.

Under the current situation, stabilizing the export share is of positive significance to the "six stability" work proposed by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. This year, under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the international demand has been greatly impacted. However, in the post epidemic era, the recovery degree of international demand and the adjustment of China's position in the global textile supply chain have become the key factors for the stable export of China's textile industry.

The basic demand of international clothing is still in place

How to look at the "basic plate" of international demand for textile and clothing? Taking clothing as an example, although clothing belongs to non fast moving consumer goods and has the attribute of postponing consumption of non necessities, as long as the population is growing and people's yearning for a better life exists, there will be no fundamental change in the "basic plate" of international demand.

According to the data released by the WTO, in 2000, the global import of clothing reached US $2030.99 billion, which increased to US $527.130 billion by 2018, with an average annual growth of 5.44%. The global clothing consumption scale has been expanding. In 2000, the proportion of the United States, the European Union and Japan accounted for 83.7% of the world's imports of clothing, and by 2018 this proportion has dropped to 64.7%. Although the proportion has declined, the United States, Europe and Japan are still the main global clothing consumption markets. We can analyze the change of clothing consumption from the clothing import situation of Japan, the United States and the European Union in the past 20 years.

According to the data of Trade Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of finance of Japan, from 2000 to 2019, the average annual growth rate of Japan's clothing imports from the world reached 2.21%, and the "market" of clothing consumption also rose from 2.12 trillion yen in 2000 to the highest point of 3.42 trillion yen in 2015, and remained at the scale level of more than 320 million yen in 2019. Although the growth rate has been high and low, and even negative growth for several years, the "basic plate" of Japanese clothing import consumption has been expanding in the past 20 years.

According to the data of the U.S. textile and clothing office, from 2000 to 2019, the average annual growth rate of clothing imports from the United States reached 2.03%, and the clothing consumption increased from US $57.232 billion in 2000 to the highest value of US $85.151 billion in 2015, and maintained the import scale of us $83.823 billion in 2019. From the linear trend, the "basic plate" of American imported clothing is also growing slowly.

The average annual consumption of clothing in the EU will increase from 370.5 billion euro in 2002 to 1.38 billion euro in 2019. From the linear trend, the slope of the "basic plate" of European Union imported clothing is higher than that of the United States and Japan.

It can be seen that although the annual growth rate of clothing import in the three major markets in the past 20 years has been high or low, and sometimes negative growth, even affected by the global financial crisis, the decline in clothing import in 2009 is still deep. At the same time, affected by the epidemic situation, the clothing import demand of the three major markets also shows a shrinking trend, but from the long-term trend, the "basic plate" of clothing demand in the three major markets still exists 。

China's clothing export pressure increases

In recent years, affected by the rising cost of labor and other factors, part of China's textile production capacity has been transferred to Southeast Asian countries. However, due to the production volume, supporting capacity and rising labor factor cost in Southeast Asia, it is difficult to shake the global position of China's textile industry in the short term.

However, in recent years, the share of China's clothing export in the main international consumer market presents a declining trend. From the perspective of Japan's clothing import situation in recent 10 years, China's clothing import market accounted for 82.2% in 2010, and dropped to 55.9% in 2019, a decrease of 26.3%. This part of the market share is mainly shared by Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian and South Asian countries. From January to August this year, China's clothing import market share in Japan further dropped to 53.4%, indicating that China's clothing export pressure to Japan has increased.

The U.S. market continues to pursue high-quality and low-cost clothing products, with a high degree of market diversification. In 2010, China's clothing import market accounted for 39.2% of the U.S. import market, and by 2019, the proportion dropped to 29.7%, down 9.5%. From January to August this year, China's clothing import market share in Japan further dropped to 22.7%, indicating that China's clothing export to the United States is facing greater pressure.

From the perspective of clothing import situation of 27 EU countries in the past decade, China's clothing import market accounted for 43.8% in 2010, and dropped to 29.5% in 2019, a decrease of 14.3%. From January to June this year, China's clothing import market share in the EU slightly increased, reaching 30.4%, up 0.9 percentage points. However, this is the data in the first half of this year. As the epidemic continues in Europe, the market pressure of China's clothing export to the EU cannot be underestimated.

Improving international circulation status with high quality

Under the impact of the global epidemic, the world economic recession, the circulation of industrial chain supply chain is blocked, and China's textile industry exports are also facing challenges.

In terms of supply, the "low-cost" advantage of China's textile industry is gradually weakening. How to improve the added value in the international circulation is an important problem to be solved. In terms of demand, the main export markets of China's textile products are Europe and the United States. However, due to the sharp contraction of international trade demand, the adverse current of economic globalization, the rise of protectionism and unilateralism, and the obvious increase of uncertainty and instability, the demand of these markets for China's textile products may shift and shrink. How to stabilize and expand the market is another important challenge for China's textile industry.

Facing the new situation and new challenges, the industry needs to actively explore the transformation and upgrading path to enhance the ability to meet domestic demand and enhance the status of international circulation.

China's textile industry from product design, raw material supply to processing, production and consumption circulation, all links of the industrial chain are highly international, which is an important part of global value chain cooperation and industrial transfer. This determines that only by integrating into the world trend can the industry realize the optimal allocation of resources and achieve better development.

In the current complex international political and economic situation, the industry should unswervingly oppose the reverse globalization of geopolitics with more in-depth international cooperation. Further deepen international production capacity cooperation to bring benefits to economic development and people's lives of more countries in the process of opening up and development; further strengthen cooperation with international brands, continuously integrate new resources and explore new markets in the win-win situation; further strengthen cooperation with international organizations to reach understanding and consensus, and strive for greater development space for the industry.