Adjustment of textile industry structure "labor pain" is inevitable

Recently, Manager Zhang of Hangzhou Yueyang Industrial Co., Ltd. was very depressed and often sighed with his colleagues, and there were also a few foreign trade companies that had similar troubles with her.

According to statistics from Hangzhou Customs, in the first half of this year, Vietnam’s textile and apparel and yarn exports increased by 16.2% year-on-year; according to the findings of the Asian Footwear Association, since the financial crisis broke out in 2008, Southeast Asian footwear has taken away 30% of China’s orders. .

According to data from the Hangzhou Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, from 2010 to June 2013, the number of export footwear enterprises in the city was reduced from 117 to 97, a total of 20 reductions.

The main source of clothing imports in mainland China is the fastest growing in ASEAN countries. "Currently bought clothes 'madeinchina' is much less." Lin Jie is a loyal consumer of fast-fashion clothing such as CK and GAP. She said that the clothes that were often used to ridicule these multinational fast-fashion brand stores were actually domestic products, but I do not know when they started, the "Made in China" label on these garments has gradually become scarce.

In recent years, the international apparel brand industry chain has shifted to Southeast Asia. At the same time, China's domestic textile and garment companies have gradually gone out to build factories in ASEAN. According to statistics from the Chinese mainland's customs, in the first half of this year, the number of fast fashion apparel brands and sportswear brands such as Uniqlo, GAP, ELAND, etc., has increased from 80% to 90%. Imports of H&M, ZARA, and adidas were relatively stable with growth rates below 20%.

From January to May this year, domestic apparel imports from the world totaled 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 15.32% over the same period in 2012. Among them, 314 million U.S. dollars were imported from ASEAN, a significant increase of 34%, and the growth rate was more than twice the average growth rate of global apparel imports. Among the major sources of clothing imports in mainland China, the import growth rate of ASEAN countries was the most rapid. Excluding the impact of the Spring Festival in February, the single month maintained a double-digit increase, with a maximum increase of 92% in a single month.

The clothing industry manager of the foreign trade clothing industry has increased its cost of "hardship" into competitive weakness. Hangzhou dcsllc Industrial Co., Ltd. is a labor-intensive enterprise that mainly exports branded clothes, mostly to Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia.

“Overall, the current situation of garment exports is not very good, it can be described as internal and external problems.” The manager of the company Zhang introduced that most garment processing companies in Hangzhou do domestic sales, because Hangzhou has a large number of Taobao relying on the Evergreen clothing market. Clothing sales platform, and relatively speaking, the price of domestic clothing is also higher than the export.

"For example, a LEVI'S jeans sells for 30 dollars in foreign countries and at least 1,000 yuan in the country." Manager Zhang said that the export orders are not very good orders in Hangzhou and even in Zhejiang Province, and many are exported. In order to save costs, garment factories had to relocate their factories to the central regions, such as Hunan, Hubei, and Anhui, and some even moved to Cambodia.

Manager Zhang calculated a sum of money. In the past two years, the average monthly salary of employees of Chinese garment enterprises was basically US$500, while the basic monthly average wages in Vietnam and Cambodia were between US$100 and US$300, and some were even lower. The difference in labor costs has now become the soft underbelly of Chinese apparel companies competing in the international arena.

Jiang Xiangming, general manager of Fuyang Yiyuan Industrial Co., Ltd., who specializes in rainwear for the new world manufacturing industry chain and supply chain, introduced that 90% of Fuyang Yiyuan's market is in Europe and 10% of the market is domestic. Two years ago, the company embarked on a plan to develop the ASEAN market. However, with the pressure on the inventory of foreign trade orders in recent years, this plan was temporarily put on hold.

"Our industry's 'value added' is really too weak." Jiang Xiangming's "added value" refers to profit. Jiang Xiangming said that labor costs are the main reason for the decrease in added value. “Our labor cost in this industry has risen by 5% every year. I understand that the domestic labor wage is 10 times that of some countries in ASEAN, and the gap is very large.” Two years ago, Chiang learned that the basic average wage of Cambodia’s first-line production workers is 45. USD/person is equivalent to 275 yuan/person for ***, while domestic workers have an average salary of 3,000 yuan/person.

According to an annual survey report conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2012, over the past few decades, the world’s manufacturing base has been transferred from the United States and Europe to Japan and transferred to the “four little dragons in Asia” before moving to In the interior of China, we are now turning to Southeast Asia and South Asia. A new world manufacturing industry chain and supply chain that are different from the past are emerging. In the ranking of the most popular host countries selected by multinational corporations, the rankings of Indonesia and Thailand have increased significantly. The report believes that due to the rising trend of wage costs and production costs in East Asian countries, especially China, the relative competitiveness of ASEAN countries in the manufacturing industry continues to increase.

Expert opinion The relocation of enterprises is a phenomenon in the adjustment of economic structure. “In recent years, the phenomenon of the relocation of enterprises is due to rational considerations on the one hand, and may be the result of adjustments to our economic structure and the transformation and upgrading process on the other hand. This phenomenon," said Professor Yang Jianhua, director of the Research Center of Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences.

According to Yang Jianhua, in the context of global economic development, enterprises are facing realistic pressures such as resource constraints, environmental pressure, and rising costs. As a province with an export-oriented economy, Zhejiang’s influence is even greater. "The advantage of migration is that it gives companies a profit."

“For our province, the relocation of enterprises will affect issues such as taxation and employment.” Yang Jianhua analyzed that last year’s foreign trade situation was not optimistic. Even if the foreign trade situation in the first half of this year picked up, the overall economic situation did not emerge from the crisis.

At present, our province is undergoing corporate restructuring, transformation and upgrading, and more injecting cultural innovation, high-tech value-added and structural optimization of the industry, to adjust and eliminate large environmental impact companies. Yang Jianhua believes that in the context of such an economic adjustment, there will be some unsuitable companies that need to adjust out. This is a phenomenon of economic adjustment.

At the same time, Yang Jianhua believes that on the one hand, the province must continue to increase economic adjustment, transformation and upgrading; on the other hand, it must firmly establish “entity companies” because the entity enterprises are the foundation of economic development. And this kind of "entity enterprise" is no longer a crude enterprise that affects the environment, high resource consumption, and high pollution. “We need the healthy development of entity companies, and we need more high-value-added companies, including service-oriented companies to develop in Hangzhou. Only the more companies, the more solid the basis for development.” Yang Jianhua said.