Shishi, an important textile industrial cluster in southeast China's Fujian Province, recently sent out a circular about the economic operation in the first quarter of 2017. The circular shows that in the first quarter of this year, industrial production picked up moderately, with the industrial value added of enterprises above designated size amounting to CNY 5.96 billion, up 7.2% year-on-year, 1 percentage point higher than the level in January-February; the sales revenue amounted to CNY 21.71 billion, up 8.4%, with production-marketing ratio up to 99.0%. The textile and garment industry generated CNY 10.85 billion of sales revenue, up 9.6% year-on-year, accounting for 50.0% of the total industrial sales revenue.

Over the past few years, local government has worked out a series of policies and measures for supporting the development of the textile and garment industry.

With the expansion of textile and garment production capacity, local textile and garment enterprises began to "go overseas". To provide related services, local government and industrial organizations have stepped up efforts to promoting local enterprises to go abroad by establishing cooperative relationship with international sourcing groups, international garment organizations and e-commerce platforms and organizing local enterprises to participate international exhibitions, especially in emerging markets.

In the first quarter of this year, Shishi's exports of textiles and garment amounted to CNY 7.54 billion, up 36.6% year-on-year, according to data released by Shishi Chamber of Commerce for Textile and Garment Industry.

While opening up overseas markets, some leading enterprises are also increasing their investment in product development and optimizing the structure of export products. To satisfy the need on EU and US markets, since last year, local textile enterprises have developed a number of new products such as corn fiber fabric, carbon fiber fabric and Taiji stone fiber fabric. Industry insider said that in the past, local-made textiles and garment were mainly low-end products, which are hardly accepted by developed markets. Now such situation has significantly improved thanks to the increasing share of medium- and high-end products in total production.

With encouraging polices of local government under the "Belt and Road" Initiative, the number of export market keeps increasing. In the first quarter of this year, Shishi's exports of textiles and garment to the markets along the "Belt and Road" accounted for 45.8% of the total, rising from the 38.6% of last year.