South China Morning Post: China’s Textile Industry Faces Tough Times

The textile industry does not stay in one location for long. Instead, clothing and textile manufacturers move around the world, following automation and low wages from India, England, New England and the US South and more recently to China. Now the textile and clothing industry may be starting to abandon China. “China’s textile and apparel makers are going through a painful industrial restructuring,” reports Sidney Leng for South China Morning Post. “While the country is still the world’s largest clothing exporter with enormous production capacity, oversupply at home, high labour costs, and rising global protectionism have all eroded its competitiveness.” He goes on to report that China’s market share by value in the industry fell from 38.6 percent in 2015 to 35.8 percent in 2016. Textile and clothing designers are diversifying production to other Asian countries with low wages including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia. – YaleGlobal