With textile quotas about to expire, dozens of Chinese fashion firms are strutting their stuff jointly for the first time on Paris catwalks this week as Beijing attacks the high-end European market.
Making a debut appearance in the world's fashion capital, 82 clothing manufacturers from China descended on Paris for a four-day stint at a top trade fair, bringing their top models, including Miss Chinas 2003 and 2006, as well as the country's "most handsome man several years running," Zhang Xinghe.
From titillating G-string underwear to body-hugging evening gowns and trendy urban wear, 11 up-market labels were represented on the catwalk at the Texworld fabrics trade fair while dozens more showed cashmeres, fine silks and sportswear to 18,000 visiting buyers, some from France, the majority from across the continent.
PHOTO: AFP
"We must get to know each other better and reduce trade friction," said Du Yuzhou (杜鈺洲), head of the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC)."
Last October, China's Jefen fashion brand opened the march at the Paris women's ready-to-wear shows with a teen line of micro-bloomers and baby-doll dresses.
Speaking to reporters this week, Du said the country's fashion industry was putting the accent on producing high-end fashion apparel -- not the cheap-labor mass-produced gear generally associated with made-in-China goods.
PHOTO: AFP
"We are going upmarket, seeking not quantity but quality and innovation," he said. "We are looking at technological progress and creating labels. This will help encourage our companies to export."
The EU, whose quotas on Chinese textiles are finally to be dismantled at the end of the year, soaks up 15 percent of China's textile exports.
The country's 20 million textile workers produce US$561 billion turnover annually, a quarter for the export market.
"Textiles are of huge importance for our economy and for our export sector," Du said.
Star attraction at the fair, held on the eve of the Paris ready-to-wear shows, was what the Chinese call "soft gold" -- or cashmere.
"Our cashmere is the best in the world," proudly proclaimed Hei Liangjie, head of trade in the remote northern region of Ningxia bordering Mongolia, near the Gobi desert, whose six million people are mostly Muslim.
When cashmere prices rose steeply in the 1980s the region leapt in to consolidate its own raw material with raw cashmere purchased in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia, buying and selling at first before then realizing huge profits were to be made by also processing and producing cashmere goods.
Over time it has become the top producer of cashmere products in China, which itself accounts for 70 percent of global production.
Of the 20 million cashmere garments produced in Ningxia this year, 10 million were exported. One firm alone, Lingwu St Edenweiss, raises 350,000 goats a year.
"We are trying to develop our own labels aimed at the top-end market," Hei said. "The European market will be our biggest in the future."
Like cashmere, many of the Western-style products paraded on the catwalk boasted plus-size sales and production statistics.
Meters/bonwe, a late teens urban brand sporting skinny jeans and leather jackets, has 1,800 speciality stores in China. Smart Garments, which paraded evening furs and glittery get-up, produces more than a million pieces a year.
White Collar's smart evening wear reportedly receives 5,000 customers a day, and a flowing designer brand based on oriental trends called Exception de Mixmind has 60 outlets across China.
No wonder that the EU opted to extend textile quotas in 2005 -- exports of some items of Chinese clothing surged more than 500 percent when international quotas expired on Jan. 1, 2005.
"The levels of China textile exports following that liberalization were so great that EU companies did not have reasonable expectations of adjusting, hence the extension," a European Commission spokesman said.
"They will expire at the end of this year and they will not be replaced. We don't have the legal basis to replace them. The temporary extension was possible because when China entered the WTO in 2001 there was a clause in its agreement which enabled people to unilaterally re-impose quotas up until 2008," the spokesman said.
"In the end we didn't do it unilaterally, we negotiated it with China. But I don't imagine the Chinese are interested in renegotiating quotas and we are about to lose the main basis for unilaterally imposing quotas," he said.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS