The prosperity index of China’s textile industry in the second quarter of 2023 reached 57 percent, up 10.7 percent from the second quarter of 2022 and 1.4 percent higher than the first quarter of the current year, according to the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC).
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the capacity utilization rate of the textile industry stood at 76.2 percent in the first half of the current year, down 1.8 percent year on year.
On the other hand, the capacity utilization rate of the chemical fiber industry touched 83.2 percent in the first six months of 2023, which is lower by 0.8 percent over the comparable months of the earlier year.
However, both these figures are higher than the 74.7 percent capacity utilization achieved by the overall Chinese manufacturing industry in the first half of the current year.
In the first half of 2023, the industrial added value of textile enterprises above the designated size declined 3 percent year on year.
The industrial added value of chemical fibres, cotton textiles, filament weaving, and other textile sub-sectors achieved positive growth.
Since the beginning of this year, China’s textile industry has been facing a more complex and severe international environment, driven by sluggish demand from export markets.
But as China’s economic development slowly returned to normalcy, domestic textile and garment sales witnessed a recovery.
China’s textile and clothing exports touched US $142.68 billion in the first six months of this year, witnessing a year-on-year drop of 8.8 percent.
Among them, textile shipments stood at $67.7 billion, down 10.9 percent, while garment shipments totaled $74.98 billion, a decline of 5.9 percent, both from a year ago period.
Among China’s textile and apparel export markets, shipments to the US, EU, and Japan all saw a year-on-year drop, while that to South Korea, Australia, Russia, and Central Asian countries witnessed positive growth.
Q2 prosperity index of China’s textile industry up 10.7%
