China Textile Innovation Conference explores road ahead

The conference themed ‘New Opportunity, New Advantages, New Vitality – Stepping Towards A Textile Power’ was recently held in Beijing. In his keynote speech ‘To construct a new future for China’s textile and apparel industry’, China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC) president Sun Ruizhe said that in spite of problems to global economic development, China remains the most important growth engine for world economic development.

Despite flat growth rate and various challenges, China’s textile industry continues to maintain a stable position in national economy, and enjoys growing shares in global textile and garment trade, Ruizhe added.

According to him, China’s textile industry is transforming from a traditional industry to scientific and technological industry, green industry, and fashion industry during the 13^th Five-Year Programme period. He proposed that the Chinese textile industry needs to focus on innovative development based on technological innovation, refined development in the direction of intelligent manufacturing, inclusive development with social responsibility as the focus, fashion development with cultural self-confidence as the goal, integrated development with industry and financial integration as the starting point, and linkage development with system construction as the core, to build a new future for the industry.

“This (The 13^th Five-Year Programme)  is a golden period of China’s garment industry, when the background, characteristics, and development concept are completely different from the past, but the industry will be fully re-oriented to the advantages of restructuring and upgrading accompanied with increasingly enhanced technological creativity, cultural creativity, and service creativity. In addition, the brand building, cultural construction and fashion right to speak will also see an overall increase, promoting the whole industry towards a medium- to high-end development,” said Chen Dapeng, vice president of CNTAC and executive vice president of China National Garment Association.

Li Lingshen, vice president of CNTAC and president of China Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Association, gave a detailed introduction to the breakthroughs and outstanding contributions that China’s technical textiles industry had made in the development of new products during the 12th Five-Year Programme period. He harped on innovation-driven development of the industry in such fields as the strategic new materials, environmental protection, health, emergency and public safety, infrastructure construction and military-civilian integration.

In his speech, Yang Zhaohua, vice president of CNTAC and executive vice president of China Home Textile Association, focused on the transformed new home textiles in the 13th Five-Year Programme period, which should be centred on consumers and enhance the supply-front structural reform for all-round promotion of brand strategy. “Over the past two years, China’s home textile industry maintained a continuously stable growth. Looking forward to the coming 2017, the industry is required to focus on the development programme for the industry during the 13th Five-Year Programme period in order to promote home textile industry to achieve new transformation, new development and new results.”

At the event, the 2016 CNTAC Sustainable Textile Product Development -- Excellent Efficiency Award, 2016 CNTAC Product Development Contribution Award / Product Development Promotion Award, and CNTAC Product Development Outstanding Contribution Award during the 12th Five-Year Programme period were presented.

Another highlight of the conference were the two innovation forums—‘product competitiveness and sustainable innovation’ and ‘scientific and technological progress and fashion economy’. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – China