On December 11, 2014 China Textile Innovation Conference was held in Beijing under the sponsorship of China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC), the organization of China Textile Information Center and the support of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Innovation Park for China Textile and Apparel Brands, Bros Co., Ltd., Cotton Incorporated, CINC (China) Group Co., Ltd., Oerlikon Manmade Fibers and Shanghai Skytex Fashion Technology Co., Ltd. More than 500 delegates attended the conference.

The theme of the conference is "discover and restructure".

Addressing the conference, Wang Tiankai, president of CNTAC pointed out that the Chinese textile industry must re-engineer its core competitive advantages through independent innovation, so as to cope with the "new normal", speed up innovation-driven development and promote transformation and upgrading of the industry.

He said that the textile industry is facing many challenges in improving basic research capability, developing infrastructure support to industry innovation, cultivating flagships for innovation and collaborative innovation system and combining science and technology with economy.

To meet these challenges, Wang suggests enhance the driving power and contribution of innovation to transformation and upgrading as well as sustainable and healthy development. He asks the industry to do a good job in the following six aspects: focus on key areas and give full play to the role of technological innovation; find the power and driving force for innovation from the market; improve related systems, integrate innovation resources of the textile industry and improve innovation efficiency; optimize the environment for innovation and give full play to the role of small- and micro-sized enterprises; gather together talent power and strengthen services; open wider to the outside and optimize the allocation of innovation resources.

Wang Tiankai points out that the progress of China"s economic restructuring, the expansion of consumption and the development of urbanization will offer strong driving force to the development of China"s textile industry; and as various measures on technical reform become effective, they will create a more favorable environment for innovation.

Zhu Hongren, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also put forward four key tasks to be done for promoting scientific and technological innovation of the textile industry: locate the main direction of scientific and technological innovation, follow the tracks of the developing direction of global textile science and technology, catch up with the developing pace in the world in certain key areas and establish own comparative advantages; cultivate and gather together innovative talents at different levels; improve innovation mechanism and realize the change from independent innovation to collaborative innovation; and enhance cooperation and positively integrate into international innovation network.

Sun Ruizhe, vice president of CNTAC delivered the keynote speech. He first analyzed both domestic and international environments for the development of China"s textile industry and then pointed out that to re-establish competitive advantages in the era of "new normal", it is necessary for textile industry and enterprises to make innovations in technology, business mode and the way of thinking.

Sun stressed that the "new normal" not only implies the slowdown of economic growth, but also opens the time window for industry restructuring. At present, the textile industry is accelerating its step of readjusting product structure, regional structure and market structure. Despite the negative effect as the result of economic slowdown, declining labor-age population and changing global trade and sourcing landscape, China"s textile industry will take the advantages of huge consumer market and accelerated integration of Internet with traditional industries. "Striving for making achievements despite difficulties is the responsibility of Chinese textile industry. Textile industry still plays important role in China"s national economy and the world trade," said Sun Ruizhe.

When talking about re-establishing competitive advantages of the textile industry, Sun Ruizhe pointed out that the secret is to improve innovation ability based on making breakthrough in intelligent materials, develop fashion-trend guided consumption power, bear social responsibility driven by environment protection, enhance cohesion power based on public preference and make innovations in three dimensions, i.e. technology, business mode and the way of thinking. In term of technological innovation, networking of enterprises, intelligent manufacturing, digitized marketing and diversified paths will be the main innovation modes in the future; as far as innovation in business mode is concerned, mass customization will help enterprises gain competitiveness and change the relation between supply and demand; on making innovation in the way of thinking, Sun suggested textile enterprises positively change their gear to flexible manufacturing and shift from manufacturing to service-oriented manufacturing, and meanwhile introduce the concept of capitalization of industry and developing eco-friendly industry.