浅析经济危机对东莞市服装业对外贸易造成影响的内因及应对策略.doc

中文摘要

本文主要浅析了在金融危机下，东莞服装贸易受到一系列重大影响的内在原因及应对策略。作为全国，特别是广东省重要的制造以及服装业出口加工集中基地东莞来说，在国际贸易中起着举足轻重的作用，因此这次经济危机所造成的影响和经济损失是不可忽视的。本文通过对东莞一家进出口服装厂的调查，进一步了解服装业在经济危机中的贸易业绩所产生的变化，就我国经济如何防范风险，降低损失、并提出了应对策略。 

关键词：金融危机; 内在原因; 服装业; 策略

Table of Contents

Abstract i
中文摘要 ii
1. Introduction 1
2.The Impact of Global Financial Crisis 2
2.1 Significant impact on imports and exports 2
2.2 Economic losses of foreign trade in Dongguan garment industry 2
3.The Internal Causes of Dongguan Garment Industry in Financial Crisis 3
3.1 Comparison of foreign trade before and after the financial crisis 3
3.1.1 Exports in Dongguan garment industry before the crisis 3
3.1.2 Post-crisis changes in Dongguan garment industry 4
3.2 Analysis of the internal causes of the situation to change 5
3.2.1 The weak brand consciousness 5
3.2.2 The poor capacity of independent innovation 6
3.2.3 The inefficient management 6
3.2.4 The lagging information environment 7
4. Case Investigation and Analysis 8
4.1 Comparison of a garment factory in Dongguan before and after the financial crisis 8
4.2 Analysis of the internal causes that affect the development in trade 9
4.3 Solutions 10
4.3.1 Encouraging the training and development 10
4.3.2 Cultivating talents of fashion design 10
4.3.3 Making good use of fairs 11
4.3.4 Enhancing brand equity 11
4.3.5 Making a breakthrough to build E-commercial platform 13
5.Conclusion 14
Bibliography 15
Acknowledgements 16

1. Introduction
As the expansion of globalization, this crisis will not only come to American or the European, but also Chinese. Many people think that the financial crisis is far away from us, but in fact, the financial crisis has virtually influenced much on our daily life. The financial crisis, which is also known as the financial turmoil, refers to all or most of the financial indicators of a country or several countries and regions, a sharp, short-term and a super-cycle deterioration. The current world is going through a once-in-a-hundred-year financial crisis. To withstand the financial crisis, we should actively stabilize the imports and exports of foreign trade.
The global financial crisis met structural adjustment of Dongguan, posing severe impact on garment industry in Dongguan and making it fall to the bottom from 2009 January to February. Dongguan is famous for international trade as a “world factory”. In addition, only the Dongguan citizen can perceive the suffer from this financial crisis. For the government, they should encourage enterprises and help them go through the difficult time. For enterprises and ordinary citizens, they learn to tighten their belts for quite a long time in future. This year may become the hardest one for Dongguan economy. On the one hand, the economy may not achieve a complete upturn in the coming two or three years. On the other hand, there is no easy task in transforming and upgrading. It takes time for enterprises’ expansion both on domestic sale and Dongguan’s transfer of inner-driven economy. In addition, an investigation of a garment factory in Dongguan may help us to analyze the problem. Why garment industry has such big changes after the financial crisis? Why Dongguan garment industry still remains an industry without its own brand and is lack of market strategy, talents of fashion design and sales platform? In order to solve all these problems, we need to find out the internal causes and map out practical measures to help the garment industry recover.
The thesis consists of four parts. Part one is an introduction to the impact of the global financial crisis and the background of the crisis. Part two is a detailed analysis of the internal causes in Dongguan garment industry under the crisis. Part three is case investigation and analysis, and the strategies to the problem will also be suggested. Part four is a conclusion of the thesis.

2. The Impact of Global Financial Crisis
America's second largest subprime mortgage company filed for bankruptcy protection in March, 2007, which marks the outbreaks of U.S. subprime mortgage crisis. As the globalization of economy, China's economy has been integrated into the global economy. The financial crisis in the U.S. has caused great impacts on the international foreign trade and aroused strong concern between us and most of people around the world.

2.1 Significant impact on imports and exports
With the financial crisis and acceleration of the expansion of the economy, China's economy has also been seriously affected. Entity economy has slowdowned, China's export has declined and China's external economic environment has deteriorated markedly, particularly in economic growth of industrial and financial since the decreasing of financial income for the first time of negative growth.
At first, since the outbreak of financial crisis, China's export growth momentum has rapidly weakened and the financial crisis has led the tens of thousands of foreign export processing enterprises in the southeast coast to stop production or shut down. In particular, the processing enterprises, which directly led a large number of workers to be unemployed. In the world economic recession, a sharp decline in international trade existed, and the situation of market has being more and more competitive. Trade protectionism around the world has been further even further nowadays. As the continuously increasing trend of trade barriers against our exports and the form of diversification, lots of measures has been proposed. According to China's Ministry of Commerce statistics, more than 100 million U.S. dollars was involved in 2008.
What’s more, the business failures was partly due to lower export tax rebates, environmental costs and labor costs, RMB appreciation and the credit crunch and so on. The recent reason of collapse is that companies do not have orders. Without market, Dongguan garment industry will be more brutal. Small companies will not survive to the face of U.S. dollar depreciation situation. These firms were in the process of transition, but it is difficult since the financial crisis hit hardly on China's exports and imports.

2.2 Economic losses of foreign trade in Dongguan garment industry
Dongguan is one of the regions with most significant growth which have been identified by high technology in the past years. But the financial crisis turn many a enterprise to a negative situation, even close down.
Dongguan's garments industry which is reeling from the global recession is turning to the domestic market but with little hope of fully compensating for the decline in exports. Data show that processing trade exports still dominated by general trade exports increased significantly. The effect of the fallout from the global economic crisis was also aggravated by the state of China's own economy. Apparently some of the Asian competitors have benefited from this disadvantage of Dongguan to some extent. The recession started hurting Dongguan, but some of its Asian textile rivals have continued to gain export growth.
On the one hand, Dongguan garment enterprises face the global economic slowdown caused by market demand. Other Asian countries deal with competition among the garment industry and are to upgrade. On the other hand, garment enterprises in developed countries also face the green environmental protection and quality standards for new technologies which limit in term of the technical barriers. The economy in Dongguan garment industry has yet come to the bottom, and is still hopeful to come over. For the increasing pressure on the domestic market, some enterprises did not open the domestic market, and domestic sales channels have not been established now. The uncertain results of development prospects in the foreign market and the domestic market are not so clear.

3. The Internal Causes of Dongguan Garment Industry in Financial Crisis
3.1Comparison of foreign trade before and after the financial crisis

3.1.1 Exports in Dongguan garment industry before the crisis
As a renowned global manufacturing base, Dongguan is highly developed in garment industry which takes up 90 percent of the output value. With a total of over 20000 manufacturing enterprises covering over 30 sectors and making 60000 types of products, Dongguan boasts its manufacturing industrial system characterized with complete industrial coverage, well-positioned infrastructure and advanced technology. With the manufacturing industries including garment industry is playing a significant role, the overall economic capacity in Dongguan has been greatly expanded. Dongguan is well-positioned regarding the supporting industrial system between upstream and downstream products and among various industries.
Customs data showed, at the beginning of 2008, the import and export value of Dongguan foreign trade totaled 113.3 billion USD, a 6.1% increase than in 2007. In Guangdong province and cities, the export value and import value of Dongguan ranked the second. Since 2008, Dongguan’s economy has undergone an unprecedented test. (Colin Read, 2009)

3.1.2 Post-crisis changes in Dongguan garment industry
Dongguan is not such a strong city in garment industry as we thought before. Dongguan has become the processing base for a lot of foreign brands with no independent brands. Garment industry was hit firstly among all foreign-trade industries by financial crisis. It was toughest for Dongguan garment industry to come over the difficulties under the global financial crisis.
For garment industry, someone said the year of 2008 was good for its development as it brought a good opportunity, but others said it was not very good because the garment industry was hit by financial crisis seriously. However, the most important thing is what kind of view you hold to this financial crisis. Dongguan’s garment industry will integrate resource and grow up further, and it strides a greater step towards the goal of becoming a strong city after the financial crisis.
Nevertheless, the following is the status which shows the overall decline of processing trade and trading decreases of export in Dongguan garment industry in 2009.

Month
Increase Rate (%)
(compared with 2008)
USD (billion)
Jan.
-27.8
40.35
Mar.
-24.2
23.75
May
-32.5
16.6
Table1 Decrease of processing trade of export in Dongguan garment industry in 2009
According to the table1, we can easily discover declines at different levels of economic indexes in Dongguan foreign trade in the nearly years, and economic shrinkage is surely on way.
Dongguan, a busy and high-effective world factory, and a resplendent and luster city, fails to find its own way in the financial crisis and becomes a storm center of China. Since the second half of this year, an economic spring seems to come in enterprises’ improvements. Orders increased and immigrated workers’ returned to cities. However, we can’t turn a blind eye to economic rules and there are changes in everything. It is not time for us to congratulate. Dongguan can’t relax and the heavily suffered foreign trade economy in Dongguan needs to be urged at full speed.

3.2 Analysis of the internal causes of the changing situation
The financial crisis swept the whole world like a hurricane and brought down a large number of enterprises, but some enterprises just stand firmly against it. What are the internal causes affecting the situation? The following are the main factors.

3.2.1 The weak brand consciousness
What is own brand? It is a combination of quality and strategy. A brand operation equals to a quality operation, which is the key of an enterprise’s success. When a company registers a brand legally, it becomes a trademark. A brand gives a product or service instant recognition and may save promotional costs.
Dongguan is a big garment-manufacturing city in China, but it hasn’t its own brands. On the one hand, many enterprises in Dongguan are enterprises that engage in processing. Before the financial crisis, they lived on abundant foreign trade order and a majority of them hadn’t thought about designing, researching and developing new products by themselves or building brands on their own. After all, it takes great effort and long time to create a brand and a long time to get return; so many enterprises didn’t build their own brands. For those far-sighted enterprises, they began to build brands long ago and enjoyed more opportunity than danger in crisis.
In fact, the Chinese garment industry has already developed rapidly for twenty years. However, we are wearing someone else’s brand, pulled by someone else to earn a profit out of the processing. In order to change the situation, we should establish a true brand, at the same time, many problems becomes extremely difficult.
Brand is a symbol for enterprise’s strength, the possession of brand has a direct relation with enterprise’s status and image in market. Competition of modern business means the brand competition. To develop a brand is a good way for an enterprise’s growth and development.

3.2.2 The poor capacity of independent innovation
Disadvantage of imitation and copy is always a way for Dongguan’s enterprises, even most part of China, because of enterprisers’ mental idleness or their outdated opinions, innovation is a mysterious thing. But actually innovation could be expressed in details. Many enterprises just reconstruct their operational modes while others appear complete new looks. 
Independent innovation in the garment industry enterprises is necessary to have insight on the diversification of the market. The innovation capability in garment industry reflected in the production and management efficiency, cost control, and rapid response.
Innovation is a habit, a sight and an ability to discover the world and reconstruct it. Many enterprises are good at magnifying the innovation to reach their commercial goal. And this kind of innovation is called maximization of the least diversity. 

3.2.3 The inefficient management
Scientific management, is not easy to garment industry in Dongguan. Due to its inefficiency and not scientific, garment industry always works at a very slow speed. As a consequence, every member at interest didn’t have a fair share in its operation. What’s more, the main goal of management is to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee failed to be achieved..
The management information system focus on IT applications in garment industry. The development trend of the future will be a single mode on the enterprise information integration. Scientific management not only can reduce the cost of the internal management of enterprises effectively, but also can reduce the cost of collaboration. It will cont