2007-11-27

　　On Oct. 15th, 2007, 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held successfully in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, and Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC and Chinese President, addressed the opening ceremony and delivered a report, which revealed people’s doubts and responded their anticipations as well as shed a light on how CPC will handle the difficulties emerging from social development and reform, how to coordinate multi-interests of all walks of life and how to  integrate all resources and powers to navigate onward direction and goals for Chinese communist cause, likewise, this report also instilled new energies into Chinese cotton industry:  

 

　　Keyword Ⅰ：Improving self-innovation ability

　　“We will step up our efforts to establish a market-oriented system for technological innovation, in which enterprises play the leading role and which combines the efforts of enterprises, universities and research institutes, and guide and support the concentration of factors of innovation in enterprises, thereby promoting the translation of scientific and technological advances into practical productive forces” (from the report)

 

　　Self-innovation of cotton industry is mainly manifested in the section of breeding and production. Prior to 1997, China's cotton varieties was limited to conventional, whereas in 1997 we started to plant transgenic anti-insect cotton, and in 1998, 95% of Chinese cotton market was dominated by the United States with technical superiority. By virtue of experts’ hard work, 70% of anti-insect cotton market was reclaimed by products made-in-China in 2005. Apparently, promotion of anti-insect cotton availed social, economic and ecological improvement of cotton output’s jack-up by 17% on average and extra195 yuan per mu. Self-innovation of cotton technologies are brought into full play in Xinjiang: by the courtesy of innovation, promotion of advanced technology and geographical advantage, Xinjiang’s high-yield cotton crops almost outshone its counterparts every year. At present, some new technologies suitable for inner land’s cotton industry are absorbed and came into fruition.

 

　　21^st century is a era of high-tech competition, so relying solely on traditional technical means is of no use for agriculture development, in particular, for China with more population and less land resource, so our cotton industry has to depends on self-innovation in biotechnology, physiological techniques, etc.

 

　　Recently, China's textile and garment industry’s profit margin keeps sliming because of synthetical influences of restrictions by the European and American, appreciation of the RMB exchange rate and increased energy prices. Some enterprises with low value-added products were on the verge of bankruptcy. Under such circumstance, accelerating the pace of construction of high value-added textile enterprises already tops government agenda, and enterprises begun to realize this crux and surge a self-innovation wave. At present, China's large sets of polyester devices has reached the advanced level with an annual output of 15-20 million tons; In terms of cotton machines, advanced  spinning equipments are label as made-in-China, and 65% of sets of equipment of blowing-carding market share was occupied by domestic products with accumulative exports volume of more than 30 sets; meanwhile, new technology and equipment, like digital printing machine has entered the stage of mass production; besides, fiber materials technology, fabric technology and product development substantially improved to enhance the value to their products.

 

　　Only by self-innovation, can economic growth gain new opportunities and impetus to optimize and upgrade industrial structure and survive in the increasingly fierce international competition.

 　　Keyword Ⅱ: Accelerating industry structure upgrading”

 

　　Transition from relying heavily on increased consumption of material resources to relying mainly on advances in science and technology, improvement in the quality of the workforce and innovation in management.”

 

　　With the expansion of industry scale and market demand vicissitude, international competition has become more austere and resources, environmental constraints further exacerbated and deep-rooted problems become increasingly prominent. Therefore, in the face of new challenges at home and abroad and industry structural contradictions, vigorously promoting the textile restructuring, changing the mode of growth and promoting industrial upgrading are not only the needs of further consolidating and developing China’s textile industry competitive advantage, and also important contents of maintaining the sustained and healthy development of the textile industry, implementing the scientific development concept, realizing optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and achieving a harmonious economic and social development. The May of this year, 28 member companies of textile chambers of Wujiang City, Jiangsu Province signed up with world's largest textile machinery Group to purchase 2850 sets of jet looms, which marked a higher development of Wujiang City’s textile industry and a new round of product upgrade started. Similar practices doesn’t only exist in Wujiang City, but also in other clusters who have been aware of the importance of structural optimization and made reforms in equipment, personnel as well as management in a bold way.

　　Keyword Ⅲ: Energy saving and environmental protection 

　　“We will develop and extend advanced and appropriate technologies for conserving, substituting and recycling energy and resources and for controlling pollution, develop clean and renewable energy sources, protect land and water resources and set up a scientific, rational system for using energy and resources more efficiently.”

 

　　Energy saving and environmental protection of cotton industry mainly refer to the activities in the production process. For quite a long time, industrial pollution has always been the major source of China’s environmental pollution, especially printing and dyeing enterprises, the biggest wastewater producers with annual discharge of more than 900 million tons, ranking the sixth in terms of discharge of industrial wastewater. As textile enterprises increasingly enhance their sense of social responsibility, some regions and enterprises started to attach importance to protecting the ecological environment. For the dyeing and finishing enterprises, some improvement are on going, such as: material choice in line with ecological, biological enzyme in the application of scouring and bleaching and dyeing process of reducing water and so forth.

 

　　On the whole, the textile enterprises’ cleaner production will help to improve the image of the textile industry and has already been widely recognized by clients.

 

　　Textile enterprises have realized that the implementation of cleaner production doesn’t merely enhance the environmental management system but also break international "green barriers" so as to further promote textile exports. Therefore, the implementation of cleaner production and building environmental protection system stipulated by WTO Agreement on Trade and Environment of the will become strategy of enterprises to expand their exports in new era.

　　Keyword Ⅳ：Perfecting modern market system

 

　　“We will accelerate the formation of a modern market system that is unified and open and that allows orderly competition, develop markets for factors of production, improve the pricing mechanism for factors of production and resources to reflect changes in market supply and demand, resource scarcities and environmental costs, regulate and develop industry associations and market-based intermediaries, and improve the social credibility system.”

 

　　With the deepening of China's cotton circulation system, our cotton enterprises has formed a diversified market structure, but surplus of processing enterprises directly led to management confusion, disordered competition, hoarding and hostile prices competition, so supply and demand of market can’t be reflected exactly, at the same time, credit problems of some enterprises have become increasingly prominent. In order to change this, in September of 2003, China Cotton Association set up to provide information, advices, trainings to name but a few and drove to create lax, orderly, regulated environment, development and operation conditions. In the ensuing years, China Cotton Association has also established processing branches, cotton & agriculture cooperative branch as well as warehousing branches to provide guidance gradually, so that the cotton industry, under the quality testing system, gradually steps into a virtuous track.

 

　　The order of textile market is better than that of cotton market, but still far from satisfactory. In recent years, substantial increase of China's textile and apparel production led to two consequences: First, difficulties of sale home and abroad increased, because lack of brand and cultural building, technology upgrading, our textile and apparel products’ prices are low with lean profits, plus restrictions and sanctions by Europe and the United States; Secondly, resources and energy shortage have become increasingly serious, therefore, overheated investment in textile and garment industry, overproduction and low-level redundant construction leading to weaken of export force the parties concerned to take measures to cool increasingly fierce price war. "Accelerate the formation of a unified, open, competitive and orderly modern market system" will accelerate the adjustment of the textile industry.

　　 Keyword Ⅴ: Strengthening the scale and depth of opening up
 

　　“We will make innovations in our way of overseas investment and cooperation, support domestic enterprises in carrying out international operations of R&D, production and marketing, and accelerate the growth of Chinese multinational corporations and Chinese brand names in the world market.”

 

　　China has always been a major importer of cotton, but decentralized procurement caused losing of the right of rater. In 2004, China's cotton futures market was established, before that, only the United States has one, whose price changes directly affected the world cotton market. The establishment of China’s cotton futures market, to a certain extent, safeguards Chinese cotton industry security and realization of the textile industry to internationalized competition. Facts proved that China's cotton futures market plays an increasingly important role as well as lays a solid foundation for cotton and textile enterprises to enter international market. Although China's cotton industry has been working hard to integrate into the international market and achieved successes. We have to admit that China's cotton industry hasn’t owned brands and businesses which can compete with giants and the world's major cotton, so there is still a long way for China’s cotton industry to go.

 

　　source:zhong guo fang zhi