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
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