China exports about 320 million kilograms of used clothing, worth US$380 million, to Africa and Southeast Asia; at some terminal export factories in Henan, at least 10,000 tons of used clothes are collected every month, all for export to Africa. Terminal factories buy second-hand summer clothing at about 5,000 yuan per ton, and the export price can reach US$0.9 to 1.3 per kilogram. At the then exchange rate of 1:6.3, the net profit per ton of summer clothing could be as high as 3,190 yuan. The barriers to this business are higher than one might imagine: dirty, torn, and pilled items are rejected, thick clothing has basically no market, and size S, size M, and light-colored clothes are also easily eliminated. Durable, dark-colored, plus-size summer clothing is the hard currency. Women's underwear, because it addresses "whether you have it and whether it is clean enough to wear," can even sell for twice the local second-hand price of ordinary summer clothes and is still in hot demand; clothes printed with Chinese characters are almost snapped up as soon as they hit the shelves. About 20 percent of unsellable old clothes go elsewhere: down jackets are stripped of their down for filling, the removed leather becomes mops, light-colored garments are recycled into work gloves and rags, and other old clothes may be made into recycled pallets, insulation cotton, roadbed fabric, and soundproof cotton. Plush toys can only be "skinned and stripped of cotton," and those that ultimately lose their recycling value are incinerated or landfilled.

Key Points

  • China exports about 320 million kilograms of second-hand clothing to Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions, with total sales of US$380 million (2020 UN trade data).
  • Some terminal export factories in Henan collect at least 10,000 tons of used clothes per month for export to Africa; the purchase price per ton of summer clothing is about 5,000 yuan, the export price is US$0.9 to 1.3 per kilogram, and the maximum net profit is 3,190 yuan per ton.
  • Most collection bins printed with "public welfare" and "charity" are actually set up by second-hand clothing companies; of the children's clothes collected, about 10 percent are sent to mountainous areas, 20 percent are discarded, and 70 percent are processed and exported overseas.

This business can thrive, and it is directly related to the volume of old clothes in China: each person in China buys 10 new garments a year and discards 3 to 5, and about 26 million to 28 million tons of clothes are discarded each year, with a recycling rate of only 1 percent. Previously, statistics from March 2019 showed that the purchase price per ton of second-hand clothing ranged from 600 yuan to 2,800 yuan, and first-hand sellers often "sold cheaply" at 0 to 0.3 yuan per item. That is how the price gap was opened up. Sun Haowen, a post-90s man from Jinan, and his wife entered the industry in March 2019. At first, they went out before 7 a.m. and returned home at eight or nine in the evening, sorted and packed the clothes, and then sent them to the next stop. They went from earning one or two hundred yuan a day to a stable daily income of about 1,000 yuan, and now he is a locally well-known "junk king." The division of labor in the industrial chain is also part of this: upstream individual collectors take in goods, midstream sorting factories earn tens of thousands of yuan a month, and the bulk of the profit falls to terminal export factories.

The underlying reason the African market favors Chinese old clothes is not complicated: eastern Africa and Southeast Asia are hot year-round, Chinese old clothes are cheap and basically functional, and they offer high cost performance for ordinary families. But imported old clothes will hit the local textile industry. Ethiopia is striving to become a world-class textile center, and the local government has begun to support "Made in Africa" through import controls, which means China's second-hand clothing exports may face tighter policies and market shifts in the future. China has also started to act at the source, guiding companies to use single-fiber compositions in clothing production to facilitate opening and processing during recycling and form a more efficient cycle. The old clothes industry connects environmental protection, foreign trade, manufacturing, and consumption. Beyond the halo and the controversy, what really needs to be answered is how to raise that 1 percent recycling rate.

Source: 10,000 tons exported in 1 month! Why do Africans love Chinese old clothes so much? Second-hand women's underwear costs twice as much as summer clothes, yet is still snapped up · Originally published on 2026-09-29