One out of every five sweaters sold globally comes from Dalang, Dongguan. This woolen knitting town, with an annual transaction volume exceeding 72 billion yuan, once again became the industry focus at the 95th International Wool Textile Conference. As natural fibers meet digital technology and health consumption intertwines with green responsibility, the wool industry is shifting from a classic continuation to a new growth engine driven by technology, consumption, culture, and cooperation.
Scale and Resilience: China's Certainty Supply
Sun Ruizhe, President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, disclosed key data at the conference: R&D investment intensity of China's textile enterprises above designated size has risen from 1% in 2020 to 1.3% in 2024, with two national manufacturing innovation centers, five key laboratories, and 105 enterprise technology centers established. High-performance fiber capacity accounts for over one-third of the global total, with applications extending to high-end manufacturing sectors like aerospace.
More notable is the digitalization progress. The digitalization rate of key links in the textile industry has reached 63.2%, higher than the national manufacturing average. In 2024, 30 textile enterprises were selected for the 5G factory list. Green technologies like non-aqueous dyeing and digital printing are accelerating adoption, continuously improving resource utilization and pollution control. These investments directly translate into production efficiency: Jiangsu Yueda Textile's 'Lighthouse Factory' reduced labor per 10,000 spindles by about 70%, increased total labor productivity by over four times, cut unit energy consumption by 15%, and lowered processing costs by 26%.
Macro data confirms the trend: from January to April 2025, profits of textile enterprises above designated size increased by 19.3% year-on-year, with an operating profit margin of 2.9%. Retail sales of clothing, footwear, hats, and textiles by units above designated size grew by 8.1% year-on-year, 5 percentage points higher than the same period last year. These figures reflect China's textile industry's ability to meet diverse global demands through scale and system advantages.
AI and Experience Economy: Dual Paradigm Shifts
The conference theme 'Smart Weaving Future: Wool's Health and Digital Life' is not merely a slogan. Artificial intelligence is evolving from a tool to an underlying logic of industry. The global AI market is projected to reach $757.58 billion in 2025, up 18.7% year-on-year, and is expected to exceed $900 billion by 2026. As of March 2025, China's daily token calls exceeded 140 trillion, up over 40% from the end of last year.
This penetration is already visible in textiles. Semir's AI-assisted design system improved overall design R&D efficiency by 35%, with pattern design efficiency increasing by over 200%. Bosideng's 'AI Aesthetic Brain' reduced sample development costs by over 60%. Anuoqi has even built a full-chain ecosystem from 'dyes to ink to digital printing to AI design to IP cultural products.' The batch deployment of AI agents is reshaping the labor structure—IDC predicts that by 2030, billions of AI agents will enter the workforce as new digital labor.
Simultaneously, the experience economy exerts equally significant pressure on the consumption side. Global consumer markets show characteristics of ecological restructuring, human-centric regression, and structural divergence. Consumer stratification is evident, with health, emotional connection, and self-expression becoming core demands. Social media accelerates information generation and dissemination, making product discovery, comparison, and decision-making increasingly intelligent. This means wool enterprises can no longer compete solely on raw materials and processes; they must build value propositions around the 'full human lifecycle.'
The Dalang Sample: Open Logic of Industrial Clusters
Dalang's rise is no accident. This woolen knitting town, which grew out of China's reform and opening-up, proves the power of industrial agglomeration and open cooperation with the fact that 'one out of every five sweaters globally comes from Dalang.' With an annual garment output of over 900 million pieces and a full industry chain transaction volume exceeding 72 billion yuan, these numbers reflect a system capability of upstream-downstream synergy and efficient supply-demand matching.
However, Dalang faces representative challenges. From January to May 2025, fixed asset investment in the textile industry grew by 10.8%, while the garment and chemical fiber industries fell by 10.3% and 14.5% respectively. This structural divergence indicates a drastic capacity adjustment within the industry. Garment exports fell by 1.6% year-on-year, while textile exports grew by 1.7%, highlighting the 'ballast' role of intermediate goods in the supply chain.
The IMF has downgraded the 2026 global economic growth forecast to 3.1%. Geopolitical conflicts, energy fluctuations, and shipping disruptions compound market complexity and uncertainty. Against this backdrop, the stable development of China's textile industry—annual fiber processing exceeding 60 million tons, annual garment output exceeding 70 billion pieces, and exports exceeding $300 billion for six consecutive years—provides rare certainty for the global industry.