The Research Of China's Textiles And Clothing Exports In Post-Quota Era

China's textile and apparel industry has always been the pillar industries and a major source of foreign exchange earned through exports and trade surpluses. From 1994, China had become the world's largest textile and apparel exporter. With China's accession to the WTO, textile and garment trade has been gradually integrated into the framework of the World Trade Organization. Textile trade has been an unprecedented development. However, as one of the developed countries'main targets of prevention, China's textile and apparel export is under the most severe restrictions. From the beginning of the 1950s, the international trade in textiles is under the restraints of the WTO textiles agreement, from"Short-Fiber Agreement"to"Agreement on Textiles and Clothing". January 1, 2005, the quota has finally come to an end, the integration of global textile trade into the era. However, the lifting of quotas is not entirely good news, just opened door to international markets only lasted 133 days and have once again closed to Chinese textiles. The world's two largest textile markets - the United States and the European Union keep implementing anti-dumping investigations and special protection provisions and other restrictive measures to block China's export of textile products. China's textile industry is facing unprecedented challenges.In this context, this paper is divided into five parts to discuss China's textile and apparel export trade in the post-quota era.The first part of the paper reviews the evolution of the international agreement on textile products, summed up the specialized trade barriers against China's textile products in the post-quota era. First, this paper introduces the development history of international textile agreement. Since 1961, world textile trade system experienced three stages:"Short-Fiber Agreement"and"Long-Fiber Agreement"(1961-1974), Multi-Fiber Agreement (1974-1994) and"Agreement on Textiles and Clothing"(1995 -2004). For the period January 1, 1995 to December 31, 2004 the "Textiles and Clothing Agreement" is the last textile trade agreement before the end of global textile liberalization. Then, this paper gave the definition of textile quotas according to the "passive textile quota management". ATC will be terminated after the abolition of quotas in the global textile and garment industry in the period known as "post-quota era." Finally, the article describes China's textile and apparel exports will remain subject to the three major obstacles in the post-quota era: the "special textile safeguard measures" in the section 242 of "The Report of China's Working Group for accession to the WTO", the "transitional product-specific safeguard measures" in the article 16 of "The Protocol of China's accession to WTO".In the second part of the article comparing the rapid growth data of China's textile and apparel exports and the trade friction data between United States with China and EU with China, we proposed that in integration era China's textile industry still faced opportunities with challenges, wealth with risk in the world market. In the transitional period of abolishing quota, China's textile and garment exports grew steadily; the foreign exchange earned through exports remained huge; the share in the international market has improved steadily. A series of multilateral textile trade friction came at the same time with the good news of continued export growth. Reality tells us that the elimination of quotas for textiles will not immediately lead to the advent of free trade. Textile and apparel trade liberalization will go through a lengthy process.In the third part of the paper, we deeply analyses the comparative advantages and comparative disadvantages of China's textile and garment industries. The comparative advantages of China's textile and garment industries are resources, labor costs, huge international market demands, and highly competitive garment exports.The comparative disadvantages of China's textile and garment industries are prominent: the lack of their own brands and the profit level is low; the ability of independent innovation is weak, mainly to the extensive growth; operating mechanism hangs behind; focusing on the concentrated export market faces greater risks.The fourth part of the paper has analyzed the opportunity and the challenge which our country spinning and weaving clothing industry faces in the post-quota era. The textile clothing trade always is the sensitive region in international trade, also is the important benefit conflict between developing nations and the developed countries. Therefore, the cancellation of global textile clothing quota both has brought the opportunity for our country textile clothing exportation, simultaneously causes us faced with the stern challenge. After the cancellation of global textile quota, our country and India become the biggest benefits. The cancellation may reduce the exportation cost of our country textile clothing, causes our country enterprise to face the broader world market, simultaneously promotes adjustment of our country textile industry structure, also is advantageous to our country to exercises the World Trade Organization member's right well. On the other hand, the challenge our country textile industry faces is also not allowed to neglect: the friction between Our country and the main textile country's trade is unceasing;, our country faces intense market competition in international market because the influence of regional trade barrier and preferential benefit trade agreement; Our country exports the product to lead the low end market, the profit ability drops; The RMB revaluation also brings the textile clothing exportation negative influence.The finally of the paper produces the strategy and the suggestion for the textile clothing future develop of our country from the government, the profession association and the enterprise tripartite angle. Our country textile industry's overall developmental strategy is vigorously cultivates the competitive advantage in the comparison superiority foundation, realizes the transformation from the labor-intensive form to technology and capital-intensive form, and from the textile great nation to the textile powerful nation.