The Analysis On Competitiveness Of China Clothing Export, Post-MFA

During the past decades, Textile and apparel trade perform under the screwy international trade system. Industrialized countries make some discriminatory agreements, such as Short-term Arrangement, Long-term Arrangement and Multi-Fiber Arrangement, to put a quantity limit on textile products import from developing exporters. These agreements restrict the comparative advantage of developing countries’clothing export and cultivate China’s huge clothing export potential ability. With MFA’s phase-out in2005, developed countries cannot use quota to limit clothing import from developing countries and China’s clothing export undergoes rapid growth. In the post-MFA, China’s clothing industry confront many problems and challenges, including more trade frictions between China and USA or EU, RMB appreciation, increasing processing cost, more expensive labor force and low clothing demand for finance crisis.This paper analyses the changes in new international trade dynamics post-MFA and the competitive position of China clothing industry. Using constant-market-share analysis, the paper examines the contribution of product effort, market effort and competitiveness effort during the period from2000to2010. Besides, we can learn China’s clothing export commodity structure and market structure from comparison with ASEAN and EU.The research find that price competitiveness contribute to China’s clothing export growth most, while commodity structure and market structure do a little. However, China’s low cost advantage is phasing out since most ASEAN countries have lower clothing producing cost. It is necessary for China to adjust industrial structure and change "low cost and low price" growth pattern. The findings are helpful for China’s clothing industry to adjust industrial structure and transfer growth pattern.