As sales in China go up, the global sportswear supply chain is shifting away.
Nike and Adidas are the leading sportswear brands in China, and globally. Nike released a collection in 2019 that celebrated the Lunar New Year. Credit: Nike
China’s reign as “the world’s factory” hasn’t yet come to an end. But the phrase no longer has the same ring of truth.
Multinational sports apparel companies have been shifting their operations out of China for some years now, motivated largely by rising factory worker wages. Top producers have meanwhile come under increasing pressure to swear off sourcing cotton from Xinjiang, amid mounting global criticism of China’s policies towards the Uighur population there.
Set against these trends is the fact that many of the factories that now manufacture apparel in countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia are owned by Chinese companies, though precise numbers are tricky to pin down due to complex offshore ownership structures.
And while China may be getting more difficult as a place to make sports apparel, it has become a key market for multinationals to sell into. Nike, for example, targets Chinese consumers with similar tactics to those it uses in the U
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
With its new outbound investment rule, the U.S. is hoping to stop American capital from facilitating China's technological rise. But will the restrictions undermine the global competitiveness of American industry in the process?
The Trump administration's U.S. trade representative explains why he thinks the U.S. got the raw end of economic ties with China, what he thinks of the Biden administration's approach and why the U.S. shouldn't do...
The Global Intelligence Platform used by The Wire China