THE COMPETITIVENESS OF EXPORT-ORIENTED GARMENT INDUSTRY IN GUANGDONG (CHINA) IN THE POST-CRISIS ERA

Abstract: Garment industry is the most traditional and the most fashion industry in the world. The sales of the world textile and apparel goods are only lower than the tourism industry and information industry which means it is the world's third largest industry. As the leading province, Guangdong's output, value and export amount of production rank first in the nation for many years. Despite the rapid development, some problems still expose in Guangdong garment industry. There is a trend showing that the status of the largest garment export province is replaced by Zhejiang Province in these two years. Since the year 2008, Guangdong’s garment industry has to face both domestic and external difficulties, such as the RMB appreciation, the financial crisis, the global economic downturn, lower export tax rebate rate and the rising labor costs, raw material prices, etc. In the post-crisis era, careful study on the international competitiveness of garment industry in Guangdong is very necessary and urgent. In this study, the RCA and Michael E. Porter’s “Diamond Model” are used to evaluate and analyze the industrial competitiveness. The RCA indicates that during the crisis and post-crisis era, Guangdong garment industry still has industrial competitiveness but the competitiveness is on a downward trend. Discussing within the Porter’s “Diamond Model”, Guangdong still has advantages in comparatively low cost labor force, complete chain of textile and garment industry and lots of specialized industrial clusters. But with the increase of costs, shortage of land and labor, lack of own brands and domestic demand, low profit rate and strong rivals, Guangdong’s garment industrial competitiveness seems to became weakened. As the amount of export could reflect the competitiveness in a way, four regressions are generated to detect the factors affecting the export. Some suggestions are raised for upgrading the industrial level.