In 2023, China's textile and garment enterprises above designated size will produce 19.39 billion pieces. The world's share of fiber processing and the contribution of textile and garment exports to the growth of world textile and garment exports are both over 50%.

From a fiber to the final garment, China has the most complete textile industry chain in the world. However, it is currently facing factors such as insufficient market demand and increased pressure on cost transmission. How can the textile industry, as a traditional manufacturing industry, maintain its international competitive advantage?

"Who cuts a piece of silk in Wujiang, skillfully cuts clothes and makes a gorgeous gown?" The poem refers to the Song brocade in Shengze, Suzhou, Jiangsu. Shengze Town covers an area of 150 square kilometers and has a population of less than 500,000, but it has two Fortune 500 companies and a national manufacturing innovation center. Today, the Song brocade produced in this town not only has the "sophistication" of Jiangnan weavers, but also has the "blessing" of new technologies.

Industrial intelligence in Jiangnan Textile Town "goes up a level"

In this Songjin fabric processing plant, the new equipment has been running at full capacity before the old machines have been moved away. The new machine with 20,000 needles can weave more than 800 continuous and complete patterns on a 1.4-meter-long brocade, which is impossible for previous equipment. And the 40,000 bearings in the machine support such difficult work, which are also full of "Chinese style".

Many local companies are busy building factories and changing machines. According to statistics, more than 100 companies here are currently upgrading and renovating. A newly built new factory building not only looks like an office building, but also has a different internal structure from ordinary factories.

In order to improve space utilization, most new factories are three-dimensional. Spinning machines need to go upstairs, and industrial intelligence also needs to "go up a level". In the new factory building of "vertical production", from the first floor to the top floor, intelligent equipment covers all spinning links.

Yarn breakage used to be the biggest headache in textile factories. Manual knotting is not only inefficient, but also affects the quality of the fabric. Now, new equipment with an intelligent recognition system can accurately identify broken yarns and then automatically connect them through a robotic arm. The spun yarn enters the warehouse through the ceiling track in a "one-stop" manner, and the conveyor with a chip device can intelligently classify according to color. After all 134 intelligent devices in the entire workshop are connected to the big data platform, the output of the equipment, the efficiency of operation, and all data can be clearly presented on the large screen in the office.

The new trend of the textile industry weaves an environmentally friendly "background color" between the warp and weft

The visible effect strengthens the confidence of enterprises in transformation and upgrading. They said that they will also expand the scale of the factory. Many companies have a "standard configuration" of "two rooms and one hall", that is, an exhibition hall, a design room, and a laboratory. What is the role of such a standard configuration?

The Oriental Silk Market is one of China's important textile trading centers. Many textile companies have reached cooperation with international customers through this window.

Such a "two-bedroom and one-living room" model has become the "standard configuration" of many companies. Now, after the fabric orders are produced, the company does not rush to ship them, but sends them to the laboratory as soon as possible.

The person in charge introduced that the "green guarantee" provided to customers has allowed them to receive 13 million meters of fabric orders in the first two months of 2024, which also makes more fabrics here have green "genes".

Today, green has become a common consensus in the textile town. In the textile industry, traditional printing and dyeing consumes a lot of water and will also have a certain impact on the environment. In a printing and dyeing company in Shengze, traditional dyeing vats have been replaced by digital printing. Patterns and patterns are printed on paper, and then combined with fabrics through thermal sublimation, and all water-using links are omitted. In order to further upgrade green, the company has also closed many oil-based ink printing production lines and expanded the scale of water-based ink printing.

A few days ago, the Wujiang Textile Circular Economy Industrial Park project started, and 6 projects covering green environmental protection, high-end printing and dyeing and other fields were concentrated in it. Improving the technological content, reducing pollution emissions, and accelerating low-carbon circular sustainable development are becoming new trends in the textile industry chain.

Innovation "factors" woven into fabrics

In 2023, Shengze Town already has 263 high-tech enterprises, and enterprises and universities have added 33 new industry-university-research cooperation projects throughout the year. The "concentration" of science and technology is getting higher and higher. In a small town like Shengze, what is driving it to move towards the new?

During the morning rush hour, in a steamed dumpling shop in the town, several dining guests hung work cards with the words "laboratory" and "innovation center".

In a snack bar of less than 30 square meters, the "density" of scientific researchers was so high that the reporter was surprised. This young team with an average age of 30 years old came from the nearby National Advanced Functional Fiber Innovation Center.

More upgraded than zero carbon, the amount of carbon dioxide used to make a piece of negative carbon fiber clothing is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide captured by a tree in a year. There are many "breathing" fibers like this in the innovation center. Not long ago, the scientific research team just developed a new needle-free electrospinning system.

In a park 5 kilometers away from the innovation center, the world's largest industrial silk smart factory has just been built and put into production, with an output of about one-third of the global output. This is also the only factory in the world that can directly produce ultra-thick industrial yarns above 8,000 deniers and ultra-fine industrial yarns below 7 deniers.

The pace of innovation is accelerating, and the personnel composition in the factory is also changing. The person in charge of the factory introduced that now, in addition to technical positions in the textile profession, they have also added a lot of new positions such as information technology, software engineering, artificial intelligence and data analysis.

Now, in Shengze Town, there are more than 1 national high-tech enterprise and 3 national-level science and technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises per square kilometer. In 2023, the town's industrial enterprises above designated size invested 2.043 billion yuan in R&D, a year-on-year increase of 12.5%, and high-end industrial clusters are being built at an accelerated pace.

Everything can be woven, telling the new "cloth" situation

Economic production activities and daily life are inseparable from textiles. China's textile industry includes chemical fiber, wool textile, silk, filament weaving, printing and dyeing industries. One out of every five sweaters in the world comes from Dalang, Guangdong, one out of every four swimsuits comes from Huludao, Liaoning, and one out of every three pairs of socks comes from Zhuji, Zhejiang.

Everything can be "woven", which is our goal in finding textile raw materials. Waste clothing, scraps, and plastic bottles can all be turned into "silk" after recycling. The polyester yarn extracted from 8 waste plastic bottles can be woven into a men's T-shirt.

The power of textiles is also present in super projects. During the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge undersea tunnel, it was necessary to hoist about 6,000 tons of reinforced concrete joints into the seabed 28 meters deep, and the hoisting belts used anti-creep industrial yarn. Resin and carbon fiber materials are light in weight and strong in rigidity, and are used in the fuselage of the C919 large aircraft. What new changes are taking place in the textile industry driven by new quality productivity?

Innovation capabilities are constantly strengthened. High-performance fiber production capacity accounts for more than one-third of the world's total, and the self-reliance rate of textile machinery exceeds 75%. In 2023, 402 textile companies were recognized as specialized and new "little giants" and single champions.

Green and sustainable development. In 2023, China's recycled chemical fiber output exceeded 5 million tons, and a green and low-carbon industrial system for the entire life cycle was initially established.

Intelligent applications continue to deepen. As of September 2023, the digitalization rate and networking rate of digital equipment of textile enterprises reached 56.5% and 49.3% respectively, which are higher than the average level of China's manufacturing industry.

New quality productivity adds a "new engine" to traditional industries

The vitality of traditional manufacturing industry in continuous transformation and upgrading. Artificial intelligence technology enables large ships to have smarter "super brains", and it has become a reality for steel workers to drink coffee in their offices while making steel. The textile town with a thousand-year history has undergone a "butterfly change" towards the new and green. These little changes in the traditional manufacturing industry will eventually promote a qualitative "leap" in the industry at some point and release huge new forces.

Developing new quality productivity does not mean ignoring or abandoning traditional industries. In China's manufacturing industry, traditional industries account for more than 80%. It is the foundation of the modern industrial system and the basis for the formation of new quality productivity. To equate traditional industries with new quality productivity, it is necessary to continuously add "new engines" to traditional industries, improve the technical content of products, improve the quality and ability of workers, and introduce new means of production. In the final analysis, improving total factor productivity will allow traditional industries to embark on a new path of development. Of course, this takes time and more determination.

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