Research On Factor Intensity Reversal And Upgrade Of China's Textile Industry

With the factor intensity reversal as its focus, based on the analysis of the drivers of the factor intensity reversal and the mechanism of and the path choice of accelerating industry upgrade, using the grey clustering model, this paper empirically measures and analyzes in great details the textile industry in China, USA and England, and Chinese industrial textiles as well. This paper also puts forward proposals on how to upgrade our country's textile industry.The main part of this paper starts with the explanation of the mechanism of the factor intensity reversal and the path choice of accelerating industry upgrade. On the one side, it analyses intrinsic mechanism, which are each factor in intra-industry's unbalanced increase, and replaceability of capital and technology factor with labor factor which results in the factor intensity reversal and upgrading of intra-industry; on the other side, it abstracts two solutions (path choice) for the factor intensity reversal accelerating industry upgrade:factor intensity process reversal along the industry value chain and factor intensity products structure reversal across the industry value chain. Based on the theoretical analysis, adopting the method of grey clustering integrated with the factor intensive industry's indicator system, this paper carries out an empirical measurement and detailed analysis, with as its analytic objects and statistical basis the productivity of labor, net ratio of production and average contribution rate of labor in China, US and England. This research indicates that though Chinese textiles and apparel's total export and total production rank NO.1 in the world, with the influence of technical factors and capital factors of the textile industry increasing, the Chinese textile industry on the whole is still a labor intensive industry, while American and England's empirical evidences show that these two countries'textile industry have witnessed a factor intensity reversal, upgrading labor intensive industries to technology intensive industries. Following an elaborate analysis of relevant data, this paper holds that the main reason of factor intensity reversal in the US'and England's textile industry lies in the rise in these two countries' labor factor price. Using replaceability of production factors, the textile production and export enterprises replace the labor factors by constantly increasing capital factors and technical factors, and finally succeed in the technology intensity industries reversal in their textile production, securing their textile industry competitive advantage in the international market.Through the empirical and comparative analysis of the textile industries in US and England and other developed countries, along with the empirically analysis of the present situation & prospect on Chinese industrial textiles, based on the study of the successful upgrading of textile industries abroad, this article puts forward strategies and suggestions with regard to achieving Chinese textiles intra-industry upgrading through factor intensity reversal.