According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in March 2020, the added value of industries above scale actually decreased by 1.1% compared with the same period last year, narrowing by 12.4 percentage points from January to February, and by 5.5% in March compared with the same period last year. This is significantly narrower than the 27.2% year-on-year decline in January-February. 

Offline retail is declining, and online consumption is better than the whole.According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, retail sales of above-quota clothing, shoes, hats and knitted textiles fell 34.8 percent in March 2020 compared with the same period last year, an increase of 3.9 percentage points compared with February. From January to March, retail sales of online "wearing" goods across the country fell 15.1 percent, narrowing the decline by 3 percentage points from January to February. The decline in textile and clothing sales in March is still relatively large, but the decline in online consumption has significantly narrowed, and the advantage of new business type in consumption has emerged. With the domestic epidemic situation stable, physical department store consumption is expected to gradually recover.According to a survey conducted by the China Department Store Business Association from March 30 to April 3, 60% of department stores said that the passenger flow in their shopping malls had recovered by more than half. It is expected that domestic textile and clothing consumption will improve marginally after April. 

The decline in textile exports narrowed and the decline in clothing deepened.Affected by the spread of the international epidemic, customers in the United States and Europe cancelled or postponed import orders for China's textiles and clothing, resulting in a decline in China's textile and clothing exports in March. According to the latest data from the General Administration of Customs, in March 2020, China's textile and clothing exports fell 15.13 percent from the same period last year, 4.7 percentage points lower than in January-February, of which textile exports fell 6.32 percent year-on-year, 13.58 percentage points lower than in January-February; clothing exports fell 24.83 percent year-on-year, an increase of 4.83 percentage points compared with January-February. To deal with the problem of insufficient external demand, many textile and clothing enterprises have taken various self-rescue measures to reduce risks by turning to online and domestic sales. 

The policy supports enterprises to change their exports to domestic sales.Under the current situation of insufficient external demand, a series of policies to support the shift of foreign trade production capacity to the domestic market have been issued one after another. At the meeting of the political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on April 17, it was clearly proposed to support the transfer of enterprises' exports to domestic sales. This is the first time such a statement has been seen in the general draft of this kind of meeting since the outbreak of the epidemic. The Ministry of Commerce has also proposed to take a number of measures to help foreign trade enterprises expand the domestic market. Recently, local governments, home textile and clothing associations have successively increased policy publicity and production and marketing docking, set up exchange platforms, broadened online cooperation channels and other ways to provide relief for enterprises. At present, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other textile and clothing production concentration areas enterprises have begun multi-channel marketing, especially through a number of online sales platforms, live shopping guidance and other ways of sales, textile and clothing has become the first major category of e-commerce live broadcast. 

There are positive factors in the foreign trade environment. At present, there are signs of a decline in cases in Europe, and many European countries are planning to lift some epidemic prevention and control restrictions in early May, and Germany will gradually "unseal" from this week; Spain, Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic and other countries have successively indicated that they will relax closure measures to facilitate the resumption of textile and clothing exports. The new World Economic Outlook report released by the International Monetary Fund ((IMF)) on April 14 predicts that if the epidemic recedes in the second half of this year, the global economy will grow by 5.8% in 2021. Multilateral cooperation is also crucial to curbing the spread of the epidemic and supporting a healthy recovery of the global economy.According to optimistic expectations of the economic situation in 2021, consumption is expected to recover gradually after the worst phase of the epidemic is over. 

Affected by many factors, such as COVID-19 epidemic, trade friction and economic downward pressure, the situation facing the textile and clothing industry is extremely grim, but China still occupies the core position in the global supply chain and industrial chain. With the continuous improvement of the domestic epidemic situation, superimposing the favorable conditions such as China's huge domestic demand market and 5G application development opportunities, we have reason to be optimistic about China's domestic demand market and the further optimization of China's textile manufacturing. 

(article Source: Journal of Textile Science and Technology)