“Belt and Road Initiative”promotes textile industry to create new international development advantages

By Shirely

On September 7th, Sun Huaibin, vice president of China National Textile and Apparel Council, made a speech with the theme of “ ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and the development of China’s textile industry”, to discuss the harvest and direction of China’s textile industry under the background of “Belt and Road Initiative”, in the warming-up section of 2017 the the 2nd China (Zhengzhou) International Futures Forum.

Sun Huaibin introduced that the positioning of textile industry in China was still the traditional pillar industry, which was still irreplaceable in the national economy, and also it was essential for textile industry as an important livelihood industry. In addition, there was still two salient features, namely, integration of technology & fashion, and equal stress on the life uses and industrial use.

“Since 2000, China’s textile industry has ushered in the golden period of development. On the one hand, textile industry benefits a lot after joining WTO; on the other hand, the rapid development of domestic economy makes various economic indicators enjoy double growth.” Sun Huaibin said, but in 2011, the domestic textile industry, together with national economy slowed down to a new normal.

However, after experiencing the plight of the last two years, domestic textile industry began to have a certain improvement this year, and economic indicators have picked up. “We should see that China is the largest exporter of textiles with the top-ranking manufacturing capacity. We need to find new opportunities to release capacity and make more wealth for our country. Therefore, the construction of Belt and Road Initiative must be paid great importance.” Sun Huaibin put forward.

It’s worth noting that with the construction of “Belt and Road Initiative”, domestic textile industry has achieved initial success. In terms of trade, Sun Huaibin introduced that exports of textile industry saw 124 billion dollars, of which exports to the countries along”Belt and Road Initiative” registered to 42.9 billion USD. Vietnam, Russia,Philippines, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates were the most exporters of China’s textile. “China has built a very good cooperation between countries along Belt and Road Initiative in trade flow. With the continuous improvement of Belt and Road Initiative, the performance of textile trade will be better.” Sun Huaibin added.

In terms of investment, he said that from the Ministry of Commerce, the global investment of China’s textile industry saw 2.66 billion USD, of which the investment to countries along Belt and Road Initiative was 0.64 billion USD, and Singapore, Vietnam,Kampuchea, Egypt and Burma and others were main China’s exporters. Meanwhile, there has been a trend towards the expansion of investment into African countries.

Sun Huaibin believes that China’s textile industry should seize the opportunities to open up more space.However, there are several points to note. First of all,international capacity cooperation should be put in the first place. Secondly, Xinjiang textile industry should open channels for export to the West. Finally, we can spread out silk culture to promote the recovery and development of silk industry.

He finally stressed that it was expected that China’s textile industry would usher in new development opportunities to promote transformation form a big country to a power of textile industry.