Light Industry: Socialist Industrialization and the Textile Industry

This chapter examines the impact of socialist industrialization policies implemented during the Mao era on the long-term industrialization process of China, focusing on the light industrial sector, especially the textile industry. The textile industry was the core of the rise of China's modern industry after the latter half of the nineteenth century while the traditional handicraft sector coexisted. Significant changes in the textile industry by the introduction of a socialist system in the 1950s and the “heavy-industry-oriented strategy” were seen in four specific aspects: (i) governmental control of raw materials and product distribution, (ii) nationalization and semi-nationalization of modern industrial sectors, (iii) reorganization of the traditional handicraft sector, and (iv) restraint of investment in the textile industry. As a result, the development of the textile industry was relatively suppressed in both the modern industrial and traditional handicrafts sectors throughout the Mao era, while the textile industry contributed to the socialist industrialization policy by earning relatively high profits and foreign currency through export. The post-1978 rapid expansion of the textile industry mainly by small-and-medium-sized enterprises suggests that the textile industry, suppressed under the socialist system, revived in the market economy after the reform and opening-up policy.