Dear readers:

When time ticked to the second half of June, the new wave of COVID—19 characteristic of Omicron Vari—ant ebbed after it surged across the country in the past few months. The business was burgeoning with office telephone ringing, street shops reopened, factory machine humming, commuters taking daily trip to work, restaurants welcoming foodies to sit at the table for food service instead of only takeaway allowed when dis—ease control and prevention policy was enforced at the critical time, signaling economic resilience and efficient recovery from social—distancing, work –from—office and lockdown impacts.

On June 15th, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released economic growth report over January to May period that witnesses improvements on many fronts. When asked why there was much a headway in May and where these fronts are and what reason there is for such an improvement when Omicron Variant hit hard the country’s economic activities, the spokesperson from NBS was shedding light on the following indicators at the press conference:

On supply side, production started to pick up as the industry grew by 0.7 percent in May in contrast to a drop by 2.9 percent in April wherein the manufacturing sector fell by 4.6%; In view of investment, the first 5 months saw a steady growth by 6.2 percent in the fixed—assets, of which the investment in infrastructure ramped up by 6.7, 0.2 percentage point higher than the first four months. International trade was moving on fast track to grow significantly by 9.6 percent in May, 9.5 percentage points up against that in April, of which the export spiraled up to 15.3 percent, 13.4 percentage points more over its previous month, thanks to the enhanced logistic efficient, workers back to production streamline, orders unfulfilled due to factory lockdown getting full—load machine run, plus new orders done.

Employment was taking a turn for the better with factories reopened, new jobs provided and policy stimulus implemented and jobless rate down. In May, the nation—wide city and town job survey showed that the unemployment rate registered at 5.9 percent, 0.2 percentage point lower than that in April.

The growing trend sustained in economic restructuring and upgrading, resulting in a better development in high–tech manufacturing sector that saw a 4.3 percent increase in its output added value, significantly higher than the whole industrial growth. What’s more, the investment in the high—tech manufacturing sector ascended by 24.9 percent from January to May, continuing to keep persistent growth momentum at fast rate, especially in eco—green transformation sectors, like new energy—driven automobiles and solar energy battery sectors that were seen with new investment growing at high speed.

In line with this macro—economic setting, the industrial textile sector, a high—tech manufacturing busi—ness, which is internationally known as technical textile industry, recovered quickly with some sub—sectors to grow strongly by 22.94% for industrial fabrics(coatings laminated), by 27.21% for tents & felts and by 36.78% for canvas to meet the rising demand for outdoor camping economy overseas. To take a look at global textile business climate, this edition also provides country—specific textile economy in the leitmotif of Global Textile in Action for your kind attention.