On January 20, at a regular press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce, some media asked: There were reports a few days ago that the shoemaking industry has experienced large-scale relocation and exports have been damaged. What is the specific situation that the Ministry o

html On January 20, at a regular press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce, the media asked: There were reports a few days ago that the shoemaking industry has experienced large-scale relocation and exports have been damaged. What is the specific situation that the Ministry of Commerce has? How will we promote the further development of traditional export industries such as footwear?

A spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce responded to reporters at the press conference: In 2021, my country's exports of shoes and boots amounted to US$47.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 35%. Export prices continued to rise, rising by 15% in 2021. The shoemaking industry chain and supply chain showed It has demonstrated strong resilience and made positive contributions to stabilizing foreign trade.

Shoes are a traditional product and a low-end and traditional industry in the eyes of experts, scholars and government leaders in my country. Many people don’t pay much attention to it. After all, this industry is not like real estate, which takes up most of the credit funds, nor is it like new energy, which can play an important role in carbon peak , nor is it like the metaverse, which has endless imagination and countless investments. Chance.

But on August 23, 2020, the generation of "shoe king" Daphne International declared bankruptcy with a debt of 4.2 billion, and will completely withdraw from the physical retail business of mid-to-high-end brands in mainland China and Taiwan Province, resulting in the closure of 7,000 Daphne stores in China, including The dealer of this company is my friend. So when I read the news about the Ministry of Commerce’s reply to reporters about the export of shoes and boots, I felt that there was something I had to say.

1. In 2021, the proportion of my country's footwear exports in total exports hit a 30-year low.

The export value of footwear and boots announced by the General Administration of Customs in 2020 was US$38.1 billion. Although it increased to US$47.9 billion in 2021, it only increased by 25.7%, which was lower than the 34.8% increase in total exports. The proportion of shoes and boots in total exports was only 1.4%, a new low in 30 years.

Let’s take a look at the “2001-2021 China’s Footwear and Boots Export Value Growth Rate and Proportion in Total Exports Curve Chart” produced by National Securities Big Data. There are two very obvious trends:

One is the export volume of shoes and boots . From US$10.1 billion in 2001, it grew rapidly to a peak of US$56.2 billion in 2014. Since then, it has declined year by year amid the industrial upgrading policy of to replace birds with . In 2015, 2016 and 2017, the year-on-year decline was 4.8%, 11.8% and 2.3% respectively. Year-on-year in 2018 and 2019, there was a slight increase of 1.7%. During the epidemic in 2020, the export value of shoes and boots dropped sharply by 20.1%.

So I want to say that the growth in footwear exports in 2021 is actually due to the large decline in 2020 and the low base; it is also due to the increase in the exchange rate . If the factor of exchange rate increase is excluded, the export value of footwear and boots denominated in RMB will only increase by 17.8% compared with 2020, only returning to the level of 2019. To be honest, this is completely different from what the spokesperson said.

Second, from the proportion of footwear exports in my country's total import and export of goods, we can also see the shrinkage problem of the footwear industry in the process of industrial upgrading. Twenty years ago, shoes and boots accounted for 3.7% of total exports. Since then, it has been declining. However, before 2015, it was basically stable at around 2.4%. After that, the proportion of shoes and boots began to decline again, accounting for only 1.4% in 2021, a decrease of 42% from the proportion in 2015, and a decrease of 62% from the proportion in 2001.

2. Shoe factories have relocated. In the past six years, China’s shoemaking industry has suffered a cumulative export loss of at least US$66 billion.

The industrial structural adjustment that started in 2014 and started from Dongguan has had a serious impact on my country's low-end manufacturing industry, textile and clothing industry, shoe and hat industry, and luggage industry. Since then, these industries have been moving to Southeast Asia such as Vietnam , Indonesia , India, and Sri Lanka. China's industrial structural adjustment has helped the rise of Southeast Asia's manufacturing industry, causing China's footwear industry exports to continue to fall from the peak in 2014. It has shrunk by US$66 billion in six years, with an average annual shrinkage of US$11 billion. Calculated based on the current exchange rate of the US dollar against the RMB, the loss in six years was 430 billion yuan, with an average annual loss of 72 billion yuan.

Asia is where the world’s shoe factories are concentrated. China’s shoe industry has exported billions of pairs of shoes to the world in the past 20 years. Even if the industry moves overseas and exports continue to shrink, the number of footwear exports in 2021 will still be close to 8.2 billion pairs, with 7.58 billion people on the earth, and an average of 1.08 pairs per capita.However, China's exports of shoes and boots are declining, and its share of the world's footwear market continues to decline.

Obviously, although shoes and boots are traditional products, they are also daily necessities. The overall demand for shoes is still growing year by year. Our footwear exports have declined and our share has decreased. We must have other production capacity to make up for it and expand it!

" First Financial " disclosed that many leading shoe manufacturers have set up factories overseas. The production capacity layout of China's major shoe manufacturers Huali, Fengtai , Yuyuan , and Yuqi has obviously shifted overseas, especially Vietnam. Among them, more than 90% of Huali's production capacity is located in Vietnam; Fengtai and Yue Yuen's production capacity in Vietnam in 2020 accounted for 56% and 46% respectively.

Before the epidemic, Vietnam's footwear industry exports were rising steadily. Wind data shows that Vietnam's annual footwear exports were less than US$5 billion before 2010, and reached US$18.318 billion in 2019, more than tripling in 10 years.

Chinese shoe factories have moved overseas, driving the global shoe industry to gradually move to Southeast Asia. A report released by the Portuguese Footwear Association (Apiccaps) shows that Asia is the center of global shoe production, accounting for 87.6% of production in 2020, far ahead of other continents.

Looking at countries, China continued to be the world's largest shoe producer from 2017 to 2019, but its output share dropped from 57.5% to 55.5%, while the second to fourth Southeast Asian countries India, Vietnam and Indonesia The total output of accounts for 19.6%, 21.4%, and 21.6% respectively, showing an upward trend. The global footwear manufacturing industry is gradually shifting to Southeast Asia.

3. The industrial upgrading policy of vacating the cage and replacing the bird not only prompted the shoemaking industry to relocate, but also reduced a large number of labor positions.

Many people from Dongguan and Guangzhou posted in the self-media and lamented that ten years ago, everyone would queue up to eat in a restaurant worth several hundred yuan for a meal in Dongguan or Guangzhou. Now there are only a few customers, and street stalls are selling food in Guangzhou. There are more and more people buying things for more than ten yuan.

In fact, all this depression is a simple failure of industrial upgrading. An economist in Guangdong said when evaluating industrial upgrading: "The dragon has been replaced by a bird - this bird has nothing. It has crippled a bunch of original industries."

We drew the "2021" from the National Securities Big Data -The 2021 Guangdong Province and National GDP Growth Rate Comparison Chart" can be seen that Guangdong, whose economic growth rate has always led the country, has been declining in terms of national GDP growth since 2015. In 2020, Guangdong's GDP growth rate was the same as that of the country. By 2021, Guangdong's GDP growth rate was 0.1 percentage points lower than the country's. Whether Dongguan's economic growth is at the bottom of Guangdong, or the profits of Guangdong's industrial enterprises have dropped significantly, or its GDP has gone from leading the country to falling behind the country, they all tell us an indisputable fact: Guangdong's economy was once the most market-oriented and competitive because Changing the cage to change the bird has lost its glory.

The trend of Guangdong's economic development stalling is a signal from the forefront of industrial upgrading.

The most serious thing is that the upgrading of industrial structure that is out of touch with national conditions has led to the outflow of labor jobs, aggravated the employment situation and pushed up the unemployment rate.

According to statistics, in 2015 alone, the upgrading of the industry led to the closure of 4,000 manufacturing companies in Dongguan. These collapsed companies included metal processing, machinery manufacturing, plastic manufacturing, and textiles and clothing. It can be said that they once supported China's manufacturing industry. None of the four heavenly kings were spared.

Traditional manufacturing industries, such as textiles, clothing, shoes and hats, etc., generally have an output value of one million, which can provide one job and drive upstream supporting industries to add 0.5 jobs. From 2015 to 2021, the footwear industry's annual export loss was 72 billion, which means the disappearance of 108,000 labor jobs.

In the past 10 years, the proportion of industrial added value in GDP has continued to decline, which also confirms the huge impact of the relocation of traditional manufacturing industries on industrial production and labor employment. Before 2011, industrial added value accounted for more than 40% of GDP. In 2014, it was still 36.2%. By 2020, it had dropped to 30.9%. In 2014, the GDP dropped by 5.3 percentage points, corresponding to a reduction of 6 trillion in GDP, equivalent to the loss of 9 million jobs.

Fourth, to stabilize employment and protect people's livelihood, we must also tolerate and encourage investment and development in traditional manufacturing industries.

In 2021, our country has a labor force of 800 million, with 12.69 million new jobs, an unemployment rate of 5.1%, and about 41 million people unemployed. In addition, my country has a unique "flexible employment population" between employment and unemployment. On January 17, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that there are approximately 200 million such employees. If these people who are unable to find a job and have to fend for themselves and whose income is basically insecure are also included in the unemployed population, what will our unemployment rate be?

In 2022, there will be 10.76 million college graduates alone, and more than 7 million young people who have not gone to college will enter the job search stage. About 1,800 new jobs will be needed to maintain the unemployment rate of about 5%. The employment situation this year More severe.

Recently, the employment rate of graduates released by Central China Normal University has aroused heated discussion. Its data shows that the graduation destination implementation rate of the school's 2021 undergraduates is 73.78%, and the unemployment rate is 26.22%. This data is far from the 95% employment rate of college students in people’s minds, but many netizens like it and call it “conscience data”! The 211 university graduates who stand at the top of 5% of the employed population still have an unemployment rate of over 26%. You can imagine the difficulty in finding employment for others. As the saying goes, a leaf can tell the autumn, and the unemployment rate of graduates of China Normal University may be a microcosm of the real unemployment rate.

The high unemployment rate will be a heavy blow to people's livelihood, a great test to social security, and a major problem for boosting consumption and promoting healthy economic development. In 2020, when the central government put forward the requirements of ", six stability, " and "six guarantees", stabilizing and protecting employment was the first priority. Because employment is the foundation of people's livelihood and social stability, and it is a major issue affecting thousands of households.

To stabilize employment, we must develop the economy. Of course, the development of high-tech industries is an inevitable requirement for my country's economic development. However, in China, which has a vast territory and a population of 1.4 billion, we must maintain employment and develop high-tech industries while also tolerating and encouraging investment and development of traditional industries.

The threshold for developing high-tech industries is very high, requiring intellectual property rights, high-quality workers, and much larger investment than traditional industries. More than 90% of investors in our country lack funds and technology to invest in high-tech industries. It is also difficult for unemployed migrant workers and workers without professional skills to find employment in high-tech industries. Simply vacating the cage and replacing the birds, eliminating traditional manufacturing and shifting to high-tech industries, this should be divorced from China's reality.

From the perspective of economic development levels from the coast to the central and from the central to the west, even if the coastal areas need industrial upgrading, low-end traditional manufacturing industries should actually be transferred to the central and western regions, rather than driving them to Southeast Asia. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has a vast territory and is fully equipped to accommodate industries of different levels in different regions.

[Author: National Securities Big Data Xu Xiaowei]