Despite difficulties, China is still the world leader in textiles with $170 billion worth of garment exports a year. However, the trend since early last year has clearly been down, in part because of stagnant demand in world markets and, to some extent, because unit prices are down.

However, these problems have not really affected competitors in Asia viz. Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. In total, their garment exports still amount to only about 30 per cent of mainland China’s but they are all growing. The real laggard here is Hong Kong, which as late as 2002, boasted a higher value of garment exports than all the challengers combined but which has now finally vanished from the rag trade.

According to National Bureau of Statistics, the mainland’s average manufacturing wage in 2014 (the latest data available) was the equivalent of $8,300 a year. The comparable figure for Vietnam is about $3,000 and for Bangladesh about $1,000. Wage levels are not the only determinant of who moves up and or down in the industry. If they were, India with its vast population and wages at half of Vietnam’s level would export much more than Vietnam instead of only a fraction. The structural inefficiency of the Indian economy is always notable.