WUHAN, China -- Over the past decade, Li Suiming has steadily improved the garment factory in which he once operated a manual loom. He brought in Japanese sewing machines. He scrapped the old product -- ill-fitting long underwear -- for fresh designs. He turned what had been a loss-making state-owned factory into his own profitable enterprise, Dolucky Knitwear.
This year came an enormous opportunity: An old system that for three decades limited China's textile exports to the United States and Europe finally expired. Li geared up to put his clothes on store shelves from Fairfax to Frankfurt. In March, he shipped his first direct order to the United States, 18,000 polo shirts for New York-based Omega Apparel. It was part of a deluge of Chinese-made textiles reaching the American market. Imports of cotton shirts and pants alone increased tenfold over the first three months of the year, according to U.S. government data.
That surge has provoked a fierce backlash, intensifying calls for protective tariffs on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers now describe China as a rogue trade regime. Industry groups argue that China is still governed by a Communist Party that subsidizes industry, manipulates its currency and tolerates the exploitation of its workers. They warn that the Chinese juggernaut is poised to wipe out some 650,000 textile and apparel jobs in the United States. In Europe, industry pressure groups make similar claims.
But as the Bush administration and counterparts in Europe now consider whether to impose limits on Chinese textiles, Li feels angry and cheated. In his view, China has cast its lot with globalization, allowing multinational giants such as Citibank and Dell Computer to expand here, applying their deep pockets and superior technology toward extracting profit. In exchange, China is supposed to be able to harness its own strengths -- its abundant cheap labor and raw materials -- to sell goods in foreign markets. Yet now that he has done precisely that, making low-priced goods that people want to buy, the same world that has for years encouraged his communist country to embrace capitalism has decided that he is the enemy.
"The United States and European countries can make their march into China with their advantages," Li said. "China's advantage lies with labor-intensive industries like textiles. By having all these disputes, this trade war, they are limiting our strength. We're not getting what we're supposed to get."
Chinese officials argue that their country is the scapegoat for the inevitable demise of American manufacturing: If American closets were not full of Chinese-made clothes, they would instead be occupied by goods from some other developing country.
Despite a two-thirds jump in overall shipments of textiles and clothes from China since quotas were lifted at the beginning of the year, imports from all countries have climbed by only 15 percent, and those from Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines have dropped, according to the foreign trade division of the U.S. Census Bureau. In other words, much of the increased Chinese production is coming not at the expense of American producers, but from those in other countries.
The head of global procurement for Wal-Mart, which last year bought more than $1.5 billion worth of apparel in China, scoffed at the notion that American jobs are at risk because of increased Chinese clothing imports. "The only apparel that's left in the U.S. is sweatshops in Chinatown," the procurement chief, Andrew Tsuei, said during an interview last year.
Li's factory lends some credence to claims that China's textile boom is driven in part by labor exploitation. He said seamstresses earn about $125 per month and work nine hours per day, with overtime very rare and always paid. But four seamstresses, all of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified, said they were paid about $75 per month and must routinely work 12 hours per day without overtime compensation. No air conditioners cut the furnace-like summer heat.
Still, the very existence of Li's venture and thousands of other private factories together undercut one of the key arguments for protectionism -- that the textile trade in China remains in the clutches of a Communist Party-run state. Party officials still play significant roles in determining who gets what in China, but the textile industry has been dramatically refashioned, with market forces now largely holding sway.
Among large factories, state-owned firms produce less than one-fifth of all textiles and less than one-tenth of garments, according to UBS Investment Research in Hong Kong.
Among the 32,000 Chinese garment and textile companies in the export trade, roughly half are private and two-fifths have foreign investors, said Cao Xinyu, vice chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles.
