The Booming Textile Industry in Hong Kong

It exports nearly all told of its domestic help production. Textile yarns and fabrics were Hong Kong's third largest import in 1994. In 1993, frameworks accounted for 200,000 manufacturing jobs in Hong Kong, forty percent of its manufacturing labor force. Exports of textiles and app arl were the colony's largest export and produced 30 per cent of its domestic export earnings in 1993. (Economist in the buffs Unit, 1995 Country Study Hong Kong and Macau, p. 27). Exports of textiles manufactured in Hong Kong have, however, been steadily declining as a percentage of total exports during the past decade. (Waller, 1994, p. 66).

Prior to the 1960s, the tip serviceman exporters of textiles and apparel were Hong Kong, Japan and India. In the late 1960's, the Japanese textile constancy began to lose market share to the forged four eastward Asian textile exporters, Hong Kong, South Korea, chinaware and mainland China. Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, together with Singapore which no longer ranks among the gain ten textile exporters, are commonly referred to as the "tiger" or "newly industrialized economies" (NIE's). By 1976, the combined textile exports of the big four exceeded Japan's. As Sender says, "textiles have frame a sunset industry in Japan for age" (1994, p. 61). India, too, has seen its share of world markets in textiles as well as other products shrink, from an estimated two and one half percent of world exports before independence

Other factors bequeath bear upon the relative attractiveness of the Hong Kong textile and apparel industry over the next five years and beyond.

Taiwan is maybe Hong Kong's most formidable future competitor. It has many of the same strengths, in particular strong deal ties with, and large textile investments in, China (Buckley, 1992, p. 31 and Lachea, 1994, p. A 7). Real estate prices and wages are in an upward spiral there, too. Taiwan's inflation rate in 1994 and per capita income increases were slight than half of Hong Kong's (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1995, Taiwan, p. 5). Taiwan's textile industry is less automated than Hong Kong's. Export growth slowed in 1993 to four and ternion tenths percent after several years of double physique growth.

Taiwan maintains a large but declining trade nimiety whereas Hong Kong ran a $5 billion trade deficit in 1994. She is about to join the World Trade Organization which is administering the new GATT treaty.

2. Technology. With the possible exception of Japan, the NIE's have basically borrowed technology from the West. after-school(prenominal) the garment trade, which is still labor-intensive, the Western countries are far frontwards of Asia in synthetic textile technology. As (and to the extent) that protectionism fades, all of these economies efficacy be vulnerable to breakthrough scientific innovation. In technological resources, Hong Kong (and China) lag behind Japan, South Korea, Singapore and even Taiwan, all of which have concentrated their technology development activities in more than advanced industries than textiles such as electronics.

Waller, Andrew. (1994, 28 April). Winds of change. Far East Economic Review, pp. 64-69.

Other smaller producers which have recently worried textile development include Malaysia and the Philippines. Singapore handles the Malaysian trade in textiles, but has emphasized other export industries such as electronics. The small Philippines apparel industry is making develop but much will de
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