From Small Workshops To Big Brands: The Products Of "World Pants City" Sell Well In Europe And America

He Jinlong, from Shihe Town, Fumian District, Yulin City, Guangxi Province, is now a production worker in the clothing and textile industry. He remembers that his mother has also been engaged in clothing production, but the objects he served were slightly different from his mother's, who worked for jeans enterprises, while he served for garment enterprises that worked for famous European brands.

On August 24, He Jinlong from Shihe Town, Fumian District, Yulin City, Guangxi, worked in a local clothing enterprise. Photographed by Jiang Xuelin, a reporter from China News Service

Fumian Town is an ordinary town in China. Since the publication of an article entitled "Fumian - the City of Trousers in the World" by the French Liberation Daily, Fumian has become a world-renowned place overnight.

The clothing industry of Fumian District started in the late 1970s. The clothing industry of Fumian District mainly focuses on jeans processing. At the peak, there were more than 1600 clothing enterprises, and the employees accounted for a quarter of the population of the whole Fumian District.

Although his mother has been engaged in the production of jeans for a long time, he Jinlong did not take over his mother's mantle and stay in his hometown to work after he made his own living. Instead, he went to Foshan, Guangdong, to make a living in the electronics factory. He Jinlong's return to his hometown for employment is due to the overall transformation and upgrading of Fumian's textile and clothing industry.

The gathering of garment processing industry is accompanied by supporting industries such as jeans washing. At the peak, 24 water washing plants in Fumian District discharged a large amount of sewage, turning the once clear Nanliu River into a "black water river", bringing great pressure to the local environment. Managing the jeans washing industry has become the life and death choice of the "world pants city". If 24 washing plants are closed, tens of thousands of garment industry workers will lose their jobs.

In front of the dilemma, Fumian District has chosen to introduce environmental protection enterprises, build environmental protection industrial parks, and uniformly control the pollution generated in the production process of the textile and clothing industry. All local water washing plants are relocated to the park for development.

"Under this background, our company was introduced to the park for development by the local government." Zhang Zhang, general manager of Yulin Project of Guangdong Haofeng Environmental Protection Group Co., Ltd., said in an interview recently that after several years of hard construction, the 50000 ton/day industrial water supply plant and 50000 ton/day printing and dyeing sewage treatment plant in Haofeng Surface Treatment Industrial Park have been completed and put into operation.

Tension said that after the project is completed and put into operation, the sewage treatment capacity and the unified supply capacity of water, electricity, steam and heat in the park will be more than doubled. The Yulin project of Haofeng Environmental Protection Group Co., Ltd. will be built into a high-end green ecological circular economy industrial park, supporting new electronic information, intelligent equipment, new energy vehicles, communication equipment, robot manufacturing, energy conservation and environmental protection and other emerging industries, to achieve the in-depth development of Yulin's industrial chain.

In 2013, Yulin Fumian District was established. It is reported that Fumian has developed into a complete denim clothing industry chain covering the key links of spinning and weaving, washing, printing and dyeing, auxiliary material production, garment manufacturing, clothing sales and so on.

The textile and clothing industry of Fumian has developed from a small workshop in the past to a high-end, branded and diversified direction. At present, Fumian District has introduced a large number of leading enterprises in the industry, such as Zhejiang Genmei Group, Dalian Longsheng Clothing, Dongguan Haiyue Outdoor Sports Clothing, and gathered 2800 textile and clothing enterprises. The products are sold well in Europe and the United States, with an output value of 29 billion yuan (RMB, the same below). More than 300 key enterprises have gathered in the industrial park for rapid development. The annual processing and production of more than 1 billion pairs of jeans has driven 130000 industrial workers to live and work in peace and contentment.

Huang Lu, the HR supervisor of Guangxi Genmei Industrial Co., Ltd., the company of Genmei Group in Fumian, said that an important factor for Genmei Group to choose Fumian was that there were 130000 skilled workers in the textile and clothing industry. This huge group of industrial workers has become the biggest advantage for Fumian to attract textile and clothing enterprises.

He Jinlong said that if he works in his hometown, he can get about 4000 yuan of salary every month, and he can often go home to take care of the elderly; Working in Guangdong has an income of about 5000 yuan, not including food and housing. He believed that more and more people would return to their hometown textile and clothing enterprises to work.

(Source: China News Network)