Jiangxi's Yudu textile and apparel industry surpassed 100 billion yuan in revenue for 2025, with more than 3,850 textile and apparel enterprises clustered in the county, doing OEM work for over 300 domestic and international brands, employing about 300,000 people, of whom 80,000 have stable local jobs. This is the industrial transformation of Yudu, the starting point of the Central Red Army's Long March, achieved under the push of its "first industry" policy.

Key points

  • In 2025, Yudu's textile and apparel industry surpassed 100 billion yuan in revenue, with more than 3,850 enterprises and 85% coverage of industrial digital transformation
  • The Jiangxi (Ganzhou) Textile and Apparel International Direct Procurement Matchmaking Conference generated a total of $420 million in international orders of intent on site, with more than 150 international buyers from 41 countries and regions in attendance
  • The local government has invested over 10 billion yuan cumulatively, building 13 public service platforms and 3.625 million square meters of standard factory buildings; the UK's Debenhams Group has relocated the headquarters of its China office to Yudu

Yudu's ties to needle and thread date back more than 90 years—Ge Jietiao, a Red Army soldier from Yudu, once carried a sewing machine throughout the Long March, and a similar hand-cranked sewing machine is still on display at the Memorial Hall of the Central Red Army's Long March Departure. In the early 1990s, as domestic clothing consumption shifted to ready-made garments, about 300,000 "Yudu tailors" headed south to work in the coastal apparel industry, honing their skills and gaining experience, laying the groundwork for the industry's later rise.

In 2017, Yudu positioned textile and apparel as its "first industry," introduced preferential policies on land and taxes, and took over the transfer of high-quality textile and apparel industries from the coast. A group of Yudu-born entrepreneurs returned home to start businesses, driving the upgrading and transformation of local manufacturing. The local government has invested over 10 billion yuan cumulatively, building 13 public service platforms and 3.625 million square meters of standard factory buildings. Within the park, "upstairs and downstairs are upstream and downstream, and the industrial park is the industrial chain"—a single yarn comes in and a finished garment goes out, all without leaving the park.

On the production side, the industry is iterating from traditional tailoring craftsmanship to smart manufacturing. In the Zhifang Yunlian production workshop, nearly 60 spinning frames run at high speed, with spindles rotating at 25,000 rpm; each spindle is equipped with an independent sensor, and data on thread breakage and abnormal tension is transmitted in real time to the central control screen, with fault warnings pushed directly to inspectors' wristbands. Winner Fashion's 3D body measurement room collects body data from 28 areas in 3 seconds and uploads it to the cloud, enabling delivery of tailor-made suits in 7 days, while the production line simultaneously handles customization, small-batch quick response, and mass production. "5G+AI" digital twin workshops and intelligent hanging systems have become standard, and digitalization has brought efficiency gains of more than 30%.

Brand building is advancing in parallel: textile and apparel enterprises countywide own 135 proprietary trademarks and 21 Jiangxi Famous Brand Products, with digital transformation coverage as high as 85%.

An open procurement landscape is taking shape. At the Jiangxi (Ganzhou) Textile and Apparel International Direct Procurement Matchmaking Conference, more than 150 international buyers from 41 countries and regions gathered in Yudu, generating a total of $420 million in international orders of intent on site. Buyers from the UK, Turkey, India, and other countries connected and cooperated with local suppliers, and the UK's Debenhams Group even moved the headquarters of its China office to Yudu to build a regular procurement and supply chain system.

For a textile and apparel industry dominated by OEM and exports, Yudu offers a model: from labor export to industrial takeover, and then to intelligent manufacturing and direct procurement going global, a county-level cluster can upgrade from an "OEM workshop" to a regional procurement node in the global supply chain.

Source: Jiangxi Yudu: the Long March departure point, where a single yarn strings together a 100-billion-yuan industry · Originally published on 2026-10-14