The leitmotif of my speech today : Industrial Upgrading – General Trend of Development of Chinese Textile Industry. Centering on this general trend, I will elaborate on the following four viewpoints:

     I. Chinese textile industry is at critical period of upgrading

II Upgrading of Chinese textile industry is the general trend of the times led by a new cycle of scientific and technological revolution in process of economic globalization

  III. Upgrading of Chinese textile industry is the objective requirement from Chinese modernization drive to comprehensively build up a well-off society

     IV. Chinese textile industry will take a science-led development roadmap to head for modernization, the world and the future

 I.  Chinese textile industry is at critical period of upgrading

      Textile industry is very important in a close-knit relationship with the people’s livelihood, a highly-internationalized sector in process of industrialization in China. Textile and clothing has been playing a very prominent “pulley” role in pulling on progress of various sectors of national economy. In 2006, the fiber processing volume totaled 30.7 million tons, employing 20 million people in the whole textile industry in China. To be more exact, Chinese man-made fiber production reached 20.25 million tons, cotton yarn 17.4 million tons, and textile and clothing export came up to $147 billion; The import of various raw materials, textile chemicals and machinery added up to $31.7 billion. Moreover, there are now over 40,000 textile enterprises in number, taking into account only the above-designated scale & size of enterprises( only the companies with individual annual sales surpassing 5 million Yuan are taken count of). Of all these enterprises, the state-owned and state stock-holding companies account for 3.19%; In view of capital structure, the state capital has dropped to 5.78 % while foreign capital and the capitals from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan combined to represent around one-third of the total, but the export value from the latter takes up 32.21% of Chinese total textile shipment. It is noteworthy that the export delivery value(factory shipment value) of those above-scale enterprises represents 26.9% of their output sales, but accounts for 57.89% of the whole textile export. In the Input/Output Table of National Economy (2002), the impact factor of textile and clothing industry is 1.223, taking the sixth standing in 41 sectors of national economy.

With this setting, the future development of Chinese textile industry means a lot not only to Chinese modernization process, but also to the prospect of the world textile industry. To respond to the general trend of the world textile industrial growth driven by economic globalization and new scientific and technological revolution and to the objective requirement from comprehensively building up a well-off society, Chinese textile industry is entering a critical period for upgrading itself, and will speed up the upgrading process in the 11th Five Year Plan period. By the end of this period, the initiative innovation ability will have been largely enhanced so as to turn out a good number of technologies and brands with proprietary patents and international reputation. Furthermore, the industrial structure will have been further optimized, the entire level of technology and equipment will have been raised by a large margin, the low-end primary processing capacities characterizing low efficient, highly energy-consuming and highly pollutant operation will effectively have been restrained and eliminated, and instead, the energy-reducing and environment-friendly production will have made substantial progress so that a higher-level industrial competitive advantage system characterizing quality, innovation and quick response as a core value will have taken shape to construct an industrial growth mode in line with new industrialization roadmap.

     II. Upgrading of Chinese textile industry is the general trend of the times led by a new cycle of scientific and technological revolution in process of economic globalization

  2.1 The new scientific and technological revolution that began in the 20th century is inducing a transformation in traditional textile industry

  ——In the early 20th century, the two important discoveries in physics – theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, derive a series of findings such as semi-conductor, integrated circuit, laser , magnetic and super-conductor etc., laying a solid foundation for the science of information technology, led by which there came a revolution of traditional manufacturing by adopting the core technologies like micro-electronics, photoelectron and micro-photoelectron-mechanics.

 --In the early 20th century, the chemistry science entered “ molecule design” era to ignite a series of theoretical explosions with respect to synthetic chemistry, material chemistry, life chemistry, nano-chemistry etc.. Nanometer-grade parts were made possible by assembling atoms and molecules at the cross of new century, which marks a new era of material revolution in the evolution of human society.

     ——In the mid-20th century, from the successful construction of DNA double spiral modal, people have gradually learned biological heredity system in the molecular level to induce an important breakthrough in gene science. Thus , life science and bio-technology have greatly been pushed forward to result in a green revolution.

     The revolution of new science and technology is drawing a series of transformation in textile industry. Digitalization and smartization of productive tools have changed human-machine relationship as can been proved by the fact that soft and flexible operation in the course of production take place of traditional mass production , IT makes it possible for industrial company to combine with network economy . What’s more, the interactive influence of the globalized way of life and production, coupled with the new-type correlation between producer and consumer, all pushes forward the integration of material originality and cultural creativity. As a consequence, the new added value out of the products creativity rises in the industrial growth while its dependency on raw material in traditional way of growth is reduced. With the pushing-on effect of the green revolution, the transformation in textile industry will continuously weed through the old to bring forth the new. In a word, new science and technology will make traditional textile industry take a thorough change into a rebirth, fresh in humanistic concern with regard to raw material, energy, and environment.

2.2 Global economic integration speeds up the structural adjustment of textile industry around the would

Economic integration could reduce the resistance, lower the costs for the transnational flow of production factors, and improve the TFP (Total Factor Productivity) of textile industry significantly. Among different countries, the traditional vertical linkage structure of products began to change according to the differentiation of products and the division of production process, leading to a more diversified and complicated relation of interdependence obviously.

In the new international industrial structure, it not only provides an opportunity for the developed countries to transfer their labor-intensive process abroad, to upgrade the innovation superiority on the high-end industrial chain, but also bring a challenge to the subsequent advantage in developing countries. For those developing countries, in the new global structure, they, with their comparative advantages, can not only cash in on a chance to carry on the transfer of labor-intensive processing, but also utilize the global collocated resources and knowledge overflow, realizing a transnational development markedly; meanwhile, they are facing the challenges brought by the higher innovation capacity and the monopolistic market of the developed countries.

The globalized industrial structure has always been in a highly competitive dynamic process, in which the countries, in different level of development and with different resource, have the chance to win, or confront the risk to lose at the same time. The key lies in the attitude they took toward the economic globalization: open or conservative.

In 2001, both developed and developing countries carried on a structural adjustment on the consumption of fiber products and export, and the fiber industry in developed countries has been adjusted since 2000, which presented a new characteristic of the globalized industrial structure.

The fiber processing amount increased by 32% from 2000 to 2006 in developed countries, and the trade value of fiber products rose by 45%. 

2.3 To integrate into the globalization system more extensively, to learn the new technology more comprehensively, are essential elements to accelerate the textile industrial upgrading in China.

By the end of 2001, the entry of WTO was an epoch-making milestone for China to promote the market-oriented reform and the integration of globalization. Although the textile industry in China embarrassed several regional trade protection and conflict in the global market, after all, the comparative advantages could be released after entering the WTO. At the same time, China's textile industry has always emphasized the utilization of the superior benefit of expanding opening-up, the speeded development of advanced productivity, and persuaded some local enterprises and governments to focus on industrial upgrading and the construction of modern enterprise system.

Due to the large-scaled technological transformation and the improvement of TFP for five years, the employees of the above-designated size enterprises, the net value of fixed assets increased by 39.5% and 67.9%, respectively. Within these six years, the newly-introduced international advanced equipments reached 23.184 billion USD, the sales, total profit and labor productivity increased by 183.8%, 199%, and 78.72%, respectively.

Unit: 100 million USD

The comprehensive comparative advantage of the human resources in China, in terms of quantity, quality and wage, would last for a long period. The cultivated area per agricultural population in China was only 0.3 hectares. Of them, nearly 150 million rural laborers need to be transferred, and the newly-emerged urban workforce could only reach 10 million people every year; in the next few years, four million graduates need a job in society every year. Currently, the rate of urbanization in China is only 43.9%.

China is the world's largest producer of cotton and man-made fiber, and has already finished the construction of the largest and most comprehensive textile industrial system. Moreover, the textile-related industries develop with a high speed, and the fundamental establishment has been improved continuously. 1.3 billion populations provide China an enlarging and upgrading domestic market, along with the extended stable social environment and the opening-up policy, which are beneficial to undertake the international industrial transfer for Chinese textile industry, to absorb and learn the international advanced technology, funds, talent, raw material, management experience, and to improve the industrial innovation capability by accelerating the transnational allocation efficiency. As the international competition has been intensified, and the profit of the production with low added value shrank, to speed up the industrial upgrading is the only way.