1. The Easiest Misreading of Anhui Textiles Is to Treat It Merely as a Relocation Hinterland

Mention Anhui textiles and the first reaction is usually "a relocation hinterland for the Yangtze River Delta" — sitting on the western edge of the Delta, with land and labor cheaper than the coast, absorbing textile and garment orders spilling out of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. That reading is not wrong, but it fails to see the chain's own roots.

What truly holds up Anhui textiles, and is least often singled out, are several home-grown anchors that took shape beyond mere absorption: Anqing has a technology leader grown from an old state-owned spinning mill, which raised the old craft of ring spinning to the level of an industry innovation center; Wangjiang spent more than a decade turning a county once "short on dyeing and finishing" into a full chain running from ginning to finished garments, earning the title of "Anhui's Top Textile and Garment County"; and Jieshou took another route, turning waste plastic bottles into recycled fiber and carving out a path of resource recycling. These anchors are scattered across southern and northern Anhui; they do not join into a single belt, yet each stands on its own.

This is precisely why the Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute studies Anhui textiles in their own right. Whether a province's textile industry is worth examining depends not on how many outside orders it absorbs, but on whether, after absorbing them, it has settled its own technology, its own full chain and its own specialties. Anhui happens to have left something behind in all three places. This report endorses no investment judgment; it merely sets out the real landscape of Anhui textiles — running from spinning to finished garments, with separate poles across the province — and honestly notes the difficulties of transition it faces.

2. Anqing Huamao: An Old State Spinning Mill That Made Ring Spinning a Technology Height

To understand the technical foundation of Anhui textiles, one must start with Anqing Huamao.

Huamao's predecessor was the former Anqing Textile Mill; in 1998 this old state enterprise was the sole founder establishing Anhui Huamao Textile Co., Ltd., a state-owned enterprise under the Anqing municipal government and a listed company. It makes not flashy brands but the most basic stretch of the textile chain — yarns of various kinds, gray cloth, fabrics, plus industrial textiles and non-wovens. This is the stretch that never appears on store shelves yet determines what kind of material the downstream can obtain. In 2023, Huamao's annual revenue was about 3.5 billion yuan, of which textile business revenue was about 3.3 billion yuan.

What makes Huamao distinctive is that it turned the seemingly traditional craft of ring spinning into a technology height. Drawing on a state-recognized enterprise technology center, it serves as the national textile industry's ring-spinning technology innovation center. Ring spinning is the most classic spinning process; the threshold looks modest, but spinning yarn finer, more even and more stable depends on exactly the process and equipment skills built up over years. That Huamao raised this old craft to the level of an industry innovation center shows it earns not only processing fees but also a say in technology. Whether an inland province's textile industry can stand often depends on whether it has such a spinning foundation — large enough in scale, stable enough in technology. Huamao is the earliest and deepest root that Anhui's chain put down.

3. Wangjiang: A Decade Spent Turning "Short on Dyeing and Finishing" into a Full Chain

Huamao supplies yarn and cloth, but for a county to make textiles a pillar, spinning alone is not enough; weaving, dyeing, finishing and garment-making all have to be linked up. Wangjiang accomplished this over more than a decade.

Wangjiang, under Anqing, is the most complete county-level sample of Anhui textiles. A decade ago it was still a county "short on dyeing and finishing" — able to spin and weave, but stuck at the dyeing-and-finishing step, so gray cloth had to be shipped out of province to be dyed and shipped back; the chain was broken. Wangjiang then closed the breaks step by step, and now has a full chain integrating ginning, viscose, spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, garment-making, washing and packaging. By 2023, the county had 49 above-scale textile and garment enterprises, with the industry's total output value about 15.2 billion yuan, more than 60 percent of the county's total industrial output; in 2024 this figure rose further to about 18 billion yuan. In April 2022, Wangjiang was awarded the title of "Anhui's Top Textile and Garment County" by the Anhui Textile Industry Association.

Wangjiang's weight lies in its capacity and workforce. The county has about 340,000 ring-spinning spindles, around 20,000 rotor-spinning heads, more than 2,000 looms and an annual dyeing capacity of about 15,000 tons; it can produce about 130,000 tons of yarn and around 300 million garments a year, with roughly 150,000 people working in textiles and garments. Strung together, what is most worth studying in Wangjiang is not any single leader but the path by which it turned "short on dyeing and finishing" into a fully connected chain — an inland county that, through more than a decade of patience, brought back home, one by one, the links once outsourced, so that orders no longer have to travel out of province to dye a bolt of cloth or finish a roll of material. This is exactly what sets Wangjiang apart from the many county clusters that do only a single link.

4. Jieshou: Turning Waste Plastic Bottles into a Strand of Recycled Fiber

If Anqing and Wangjiang took the road of making traditional textiles solid, Jieshou took another — turning waste into fiber feedstock along a recycling route.

Jieshou, under Fuyang, is known for resource recycling. What it is most remembered for is a knack for "best understanding that trash is a resource in the wrong place": recovering, cleaning, melting and re-drawing waste plastic bottles into filament, made into recycled polyester filament and recycled chemical-fiber cloth, used for home textiles, apparel, luggage and more. This route shifts part of the textile feedstock end from reliance on virgin petrochemical raw materials to recycled sources. By 2023, Jieshou's new-materials industry reached an output value of about 19 billion yuan, with about fifty-odd above-scale new-materials enterprises, half of all above-scale industrial enterprises in the city — a sizable share of which is capacity related to recycled fiber.

The value of Jieshou's route lies not in how much fiber it produces but in offering a different answer at the feedstock end. Textiles depend heavily on raw materials, and the source of chemical fibers lies mostly in petrochemicals, whose prices are buffeted by cycles; by bringing in discarded resources like waste bottles, Jieshou keeps, beyond virgin materials, a recycled line of supply in reserve. At a moment when environmental constraints tighten and demand for recycled materials grows ever clearer, this is an anchor that looks inconspicuous yet is increasingly valued. Together with Anqing's spinning and Wangjiang's full chain, it forms three different ways of living that Anhui textiles practice across the province's south and north.

5. Northern Anhui's Absorption: Turning the Delta's Spillover into Its Own Capacity

There is one story Anhui textiles cannot skip: northern Anhui's absorption of industrial relocation from the Yangtze River Delta.

Anhui sits between the Delta's traditional textile bases and the central-western interior, a link in the gradient transfer of industry from east to west. Cities in northern Anhui — Suzhou, Fuyang, Bozhou and others — have relatively lower land and labor costs and, through Delta integration, have built paired cooperation with the coastal provinces: Suzhou, for instance, is a paired-assistance partner of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, with cooperation in jointly building parks and linking industrial chains. The direction of absorption is not simply to move in some sewing workshops, but to deliberately cluster around higher-value fields better suited to local conditions — functional chemical-fiber non-wovens, outdoor sportswear, and the recycling of used textiles.

Absorption done well or badly makes a large difference. Simply taking in low-end capacity often just relocates someone else's cost pressure, leaving the chain shallow; but where, as in northern Anhui, the chance of absorption is used to settle links such as functional materials and recycling, there is a chance that after the relocation wave passes, an industry of one's own remains. Anhui has also stated clearly that it aims to push textile main-business revenue past 200 billion yuan by 2025 and to cultivate leaders with revenue over 10 billion yuan. Whether that goal is met depends in large part on whether these northern cities can grow the absorbed capacity into roots of their own, rather than leaving it a stretch of someone else's chain that can be relocated again at any time.

6. The Questions of Transition: Technology Upgrading, Keeping the Full Chain, and Two Legs at the Feedstock End

Put Anqing, Wangjiang, Jieshou and northern Anhui together and the shape of Anhui textiles becomes clear: not one belt joined into a whole, but several self-standing anchors scattered across the province's south and north, each going its own way. This pattern has its merits — not betting on a single link or a single city; but it also brings several concrete questions.

The first question is technology upgrading. Anhui textiles are no longer small in scale, but products such as yarn, gray cloth and recycled fiber remain mostly intermediate-stage, bulk goods whose prices are buffeted by cycles and by peers' capacity expansion. That Huamao raised ring spinning to the level of an innovation center proves Anhui has the ability to go deep on technology; but whether more enterprises can move from competing on capacity to competing on differentiation and functionality decides whether this chain earns hard processing money or commands a technology premium.

The second question is keeping the full chain. That Wangjiang closed its breaks over a decade and kept the full chain at home is the most precious sample in Anhui textiles. But once a full chain is built, whether it can be held — especially in dyeing and finishing, the high-energy, high-emission link most easily checked by environmental constraints — is a question Wangjiang-style county clusters must keep answering. Bringing the chain back is not easy; holding it is harder.

The third question is two legs at the feedstock end. Jieshou has stepped out the recycled-fiber leg, adding a recycling line of supply; but the feedstock source of Anhui textiles still depends in considerable part on outside virgin chemical fiber and cotton. How to make both the virgin and the recycled legs stand firm, and to grasp a little more initiative at the feedstock end, is the key to whether this chain can hold its costs and stability.

For upstream suppliers serving Anhui's textile industry — whether sales teams in chemical-fiber raw materials, textile machinery, dyeing-and-finishing auxiliaries or recycling equipment — Tianxia Gongchang lets you filter Anhui textile factory directories and decision-makers' contacts along the two dimensions of region and industry, turning customer development from asking around door by door into following a map.

7. The Institute's Judgment

The real point of interest in Anhui textiles is not how much Delta spillover it has absorbed, but the several things it has settled beyond absorption: Anqing Huamao made the old craft of ring spinning into an industry innovation center; Wangjiang spent more than a decade turning "short on dyeing and finishing" into the fully connected "top county"; Jieshou turned waste plastic bottles into recycled fiber. These three anchors lie scattered across the province's south and north, unconnected, yet each stands firm — which is exactly to say that the root of Anhui textiles lies not in any one city or any one link, but in its willingness to make this chain solid, place by place, in different ways.

But splitting into several poles is both Anhui's flexibility and its difficulty. When the pressure of technology upgrading bears on every link, when the environmental line tightens onto the most fragile dyeing-and-finishing stage, and when two legs at the feedstock end must stand firm at once, the question Anhui must answer is no longer "can it absorb the orders" but "can it grow the absorbed, the closed and the recycled capacity into more valuable, more holdable forms." The Institute's judgment is that the next stage of Anhui textiles will be decided not by whether it can take on a few hundred million more pieces of contract work, but by whether Huamao's technology, Wangjiang's full chain and Jieshou's recycling can each dig one layer deeper. Several self-standing anchors are a resilience few other places possess; but growing these anchors into roots truly held firm is something no incoming wave of relocation can accomplish for it.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Anhui textile factory directory and industry data)
  • Anhui Huamao Textile Co., Ltd. 2023 Annual Report, Cninfo, Sina Finance: Huamao's predecessor as the former Anqing Textile Mill, a municipally owned listed state enterprise, main business in yarn, gray cloth, fabrics and industrial textiles, 2023 revenue and textile business revenue, state-recognized enterprise technology center and national textile industry ring-spinning technology innovation center
  • Anhui News (China Anhui Online), Texnet textile information network, China National Textile and Apparel Council: Wangjiang's full-chain composition, 2023 number of above-scale textile-garment enterprises and share of total output, 2024 total output value, the "Anhui's Top Textile and Garment County" title, ring- and rotor-spinning and loom and dyeing capacity, annual yarn and garment output, workforce size
  • Xinhua News Agency: Jieshou resource recycling and recycled fiber, new-materials industry output value and number of above-scale enterprises
  • National Development and Reform Commission, The Paper: northern Anhui's Suzhou absorbing Delta textile-garment relocation, Suzhou-Hangzhou paired assistance, functional chemical-fiber non-woven direction
  • Anhui "14th Five-Year Plan" Textile Industry Development Plan, Anhui Industry Network: target of textile main-business revenue over 200 billion yuan by 2025 and cultivation of leaders with revenue over 10 billion yuan