Two years ago, when Guizhou incorporated textiles and apparel into the province's "6+3" modern industrial system, many in the industry were skeptical. On August 25, 2026, the China Textile Industry Federation Autumn Joint Exhibition was held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, where a special promotion event for Guizhou's textile and apparel industry took the stage. A remark by Wang Chao, Party Secretary and Chairman of Guizhou Textile Industry Development Group — "Guizhou can do textiles" — can be seen as a direct response to the doubts of the past two years.

Over those two years, Guizhou's scorecard includes: 11 leading enterprises settled in, about ¥2.3 billion in investment, an expected output value of ¥10 billion, over 30,000 jobs created, and ¥20 billion in sales. Yan Yan, Vice President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, commented that Guizhou, leveraging its comparative advantages in labor, energy, and transportation, is orderly undertaking the transfer of industries from the east, promoting the clustering of the industrial chain, and carving out a distinctive track combining "intangible cultural heritage + sports."

From "Landlord" to "Industrial Partner"

In the past, local investment promotion mostly stayed at the level of providing land and factory buildings and collecting rent, with loose relationships and limited appeal to leading enterprises. Guizhou's solution was to build a provincial-level industrial platform: in July 2024, Guizhou Textile Industry Development Group was inaugurated, with the strategic guidance of "building platforms, attracting leaders, strengthening services" and the implementation path of "shaping brands, clustering industries, promoting employment." The group has three wholly owned subsidiaries — park operations, human resources, and supply chain — covering investment attraction and project landing, recruitment and training, centralized procurement of raw and auxiliary materials, and logistics, reducing the cost of enterprise landing through a combination of "project cooperation, equity investment, park services, and policy empowerment."

The case of Metersbonwe was repeatedly mentioned. In September 2025, Guizhou Provincial Party Secretary Xu Lin and Governor Li Bingjun met with Li Ning, founder of the Li-Ning brand, and witnessed the signing of an agreement for comprehensive cooperation in sports events, sports apparel, and brand promotion; in November of the same year, the competition uniforms for the Guizhou delegation to the 15th National Games, jointly designed and manufactured by Guizhou Textile Group, Li-Ning Group, and Donghua University, were unveiled, incorporating national-level intangible cultural heritage elements such as batik "sun patterns and bird patterns." Li-Ning's settlement brought a chain effect — Jiadu Garments, introduced by Li-Ning, decided within just over a month to invest ¥200 million in Duyun to build a sports and outdoor manufacturing project with a workforce of 2,000. Metersbonwe, meanwhile, went from signing to production in Dafang County, Bijie, in just over 60 days; Chairman Zhou Chengjian summed it up as "Guizhou speed" and "Guizhou warmth," with over 90% of employees being locals, many of them returning skilled workers. He cited three main reasons: the attention of the main leaders of the provincial party committee and government, the pragmatism and efficiency of officials at all levels, and a visible cost calculation — Guizhou has over a million migrant workers, hundreds of thousands of whom work in textiles and apparel, and its comprehensive labor cost is more than 30% lower than that of the coastal areas.

The "1+9" Province-Wide Layout and Hard Numbers

Guizhou is not pursuing a scattered approach but building a "1+9" provincial industrial spatial strategy, with Gui'an New Area as the core and nine cities and prefectures coordinating in tandem to form ten major bases. Four bases — Gui'an, Duyun, Sansui, and Dafang — have already been built and are taking shape; the number will reach five in 2026, advance to seven in 2027, and achieve full coverage by 2030. Each base has a differentiated role: Zunyi is positioned for home textiles and textile equipment manufacturing, Liupanshui focuses on intelligent garment dyeing, weaving, and manufacturing, and Qianxinan Prefecture targets uniform manufacturing.

Ao Hong, Director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, introduced that Guizhou is seizing the opportunities of east-west cooperation and the "east-to-west textile transfer," building two full-industry-chain cluster zones in Bijie and Gui'an, as well as distinctive industrial clusters in Yuqing, Zunyi, and Duyun, Qiannan, pushing the industry to extend from single-point processing to the full chain of spinning, weaving, dyeing, and garment making. In terms of data, the province's total textile and apparel industrial output value exceeded ¥10 billion in 2025, and in the first half of 2026 the output growth rate remained above 20%, with industrial investment growth reaching 117%.

Employment Is the Underlying Foundation of This Business

Guizhou's development of textiles is also regarded as a livelihood project. The province has about 23.39 million working-age people, with about 6.5 million working elsewhere, roughly 40% of whom are in the light textile industry. Ao Hong said frankly that enabling migrant workers to go from "traveling far from home" to "working near home" is one of the starting points for laying out this industry. The Hongsheng Textile "R&D-production-sales integration" project in Bijie High-tech Zone, with an investment of ¥1.812 billion, went from signing to production in just over four months; a worker who had struggled outside the province for more than a decade now has a job at his doorstep with a monthly salary of over ¥10,000; Bijie High-tech Zone has gathered 49 light textile and garment enterprises, creating over 5,000 jobs; Guizhou Shenglong Apparel in the Duyun Lüyinhu Industrial Park has had saturated orders year-round since starting production in July 2025. According to the plan, by 2030 Guizhou's textile and apparel industry will have an employment capacity of about 200,000 people. In 2025, 138 textile projects were signed across the province; Guizhou Textile Group visited target leading enterprises more than 280 times in two years and held three promotion events in Shanghai, Foshan, and Quanzhou.

From OEM Hinterland to Brand Incubator

Brands were once a weak point for Guizhou textiles. Wang Chao introduced three major proprietary brand matrices: "Qiancheng" specialized apparel integrates order resources to empower landed enterprises; "Qianjin" ethnic apparel combines modern design with intangible cultural heritage techniques; "Qianchao" sports apparel cooperates with Li-Ning, Village Super League, Village BA, and others, attempting to form a closed loop of "celebrities, famous enterprises, famous events, and famous products." Guizhou has 30 national-level textile-related intangible cultural heritage projects, the most in the country; Miao embroidery and batik provide materials for fashion design and cultural creativity, and high-profile events such as "Village Super League" and "Village BA" are accelerating their integration with the textile and apparel industry.

Standing at the threshold of the "15th Five-Year Plan," Yan Yan reminded Guizhou to solve the problem of "integrating in" after "bringing in": precisely undertaking eastern production capacity is only the first step, and localities need to deepen segmented tracks to form complementary ecosystems and avoid homogenization; the differentiated advantage lies in ethnic culture, and intangible cultural heritage must move from display cases to products with market competitiveness; at the same time, digital transformation and green manufacturing upgrading must be coordinated to avoid remaining at the low-end OEM level. For the used clothing and second-hand apparel industry, Guizhou's current path of undertaking eastern production capacity and pushing brand and intangible cultural heritage integration means that new production capacity nodes and order flows are emerging upstream in China's textile supply chain, which is worth watching.

Source: "Guizhou can do textiles"! The industrial breakthrough path of a western province · Originally published on 2026-09-16