Determinants of Competitiveness: Observations in China's Textile and Apparel Industries

This paper attempts to explore key determinants of competitiveness in the textile and apparelindustries, with special reference to Chinese Mainland. The authors conduct a survey that isdesigned to use productivity, supply-side and demand-side determinants to measureenterprises’ competitiveness. The collected survey data is then analyzed using factor analysisto capture the related determining factors indicative of competitiveness at the enterpriselevel. The findings demonstrate that government policies and related industry infrastructureare the most important determinants of competitiveness in the textile and apparel industries,followed by domestic demand. This suggests that the improvement of industry infrastructurecan foster industry performance, and that more resources should be endowed to enhancethe domestic business competitiveness of local enterprises. The development of domesticdemand will foster the competitiveness of the textile and apparel industries on a moresustainable basis.