The cavernous halls of the Dalang Woollen Trade Centre are hushed on a weekday afternoon as traders lounge in their shops. “Business is so-so right now. Maybe it's because we are renovating for the fair,” says Xiao Ruijin, an investment adviser at the 120,000 square metre facility in Dongguan, a manufacturing city in China's southern Guangdong province.
“It is always this quiet here,” counters a shop owner, giving only his surname, Li. He too appears not particularly worried by the calm just weeks before the centre's annual fair, which last year attracted some 51,000 foreign and domestic buyers.
The trade centre is a testament to the will-power and hubris of the local township government, which has cultivated an industry capable of producing more than 100m pieces of woollen knitwear a year, 40 per cent of them for export. But, for all the nonchalance in evidence at the centre, Guangdong's garment industry is experiencing severe stress. According to provincial statistics, January-July exports of garments and accessories fell 31 per cent from the same period last year to $13.3bn (£7.2bn, €9.1bn). Exports of plastic goods, toys and lamps are also stagnant or falling.