A grey-cloth workshop founded in 2012 now controls 60% of China's umbrella fabric output, producing over 1 billion meters annually. This is not a story from coastal textile hubs, but from Dongjun Textile in Qiyang, Hunan. Behind it lies a decade of accumulation for a national-level SME characteristic industrial cluster.
Data Behind the Industrial Base
By 2025, Qiyang had gathered 159 textile enterprises, including 41 above-scale firms and 25 specialized, innovative, or single-champion enterprises, achieving an industrial output value of 8.094 billion yuan, accounting for 17.94% of the city's total. From 2023 to 2025, the cluster's output grew at an average annual rate of about 11.5%. These numbers began with just a few small factories over a decade ago.
More striking is the capacity structure: about 6,300 air-jet and water-jet looms, an annual umbrella fabric capacity of about 1 billion meters, and box and tent fabric capacities of about 300 million meters each. Qiyang has become the country's largest umbrella fabric production base and Hunan's largest textile cluster. The Baishui Textile Town is the province's only textile-themed industrial town, and the functional fabric cluster was recognized as a national-level SME characteristic cluster.
Behind the scale lies vertical integration. Dongjun Textile expanded from a single process to 16 complete processes—spinning, weaving, printing, dyeing, and finishing—forming a full chain from yarn to finished goods. It also built five DMF and toluene recovery towers, achieving near-zero emissions of waste gases. This means Qiyang has the environmental and technical foundation to upgrade from quantity to quality.
Policy and Location Advantages
Qiyang's rise is not accidental. The national 15th Five-Year Plan for expanding domestic demand and promoting consumption lists outdoor economy and sports consumption as key cultivation directions, opening windows for functional fabrics and scenario-based products. Qiyang's location provides critical support—it has integrated into the half-hour living circle of Yongzhou, the one-hour economic circle of Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, and the three-hour circle of the Pearl River Delta, soon entering a 1.5-hour circle as the backyard of the Greater Bay Area.
Comprehensive factor costs are over 10% lower than coastal textile hubs, a real attraction for enterprises seeking relocation. The local government has built the city's first county-level customs service station and enterprise service center, offering standard factory buildings with 'move-in' readiness, flexible industrial land transfer, case-by-case policies, and full-process agency services. The 2023 Three-Year Action Plan for the Light Textile and Footwear Cluster established a chain-length system, industry alliance, and closed-loop complaint handling mechanism.
Importantly, Qiyang is not simply 'taking over' transferred industries. In 2025, a policy draft on promoting technological innovation and high-quality industrial development proposed incentives for exhibitions, foreign trade increments, and technical renovations, aligning with Hunan's 'Smart Empowerment' initiative that provides free digital diagnostics. This indicates a shift from a 'policy depression' to an 'innovation highland'.
Structural Weaknesses and Breakthrough Direction
Despite scale advantages, Qiyang's textile industry shows a 'strong middle, weak ends' pattern: upstream raw materials like nylon and pre-weaving support are insufficient, constraining supply chain stability and cost control; downstream high-value outdoor end products like jackets and tents are scarce, limiting access to consumer dividends. Auxiliary materials, public testing, industrial design, and brand channels remain weak.
This implies that if Qiyang only stays in fabric processing, it will face profit ceilings. To address this, the local government has set a new development logic—'using functional fabrics as a fulcrum, supplementing the front end, expanding the terminal, upgrading capability, and building brands'—and constructed a '1347' action framework targeting 'a nationally influential outdoor sports textile and apparel cluster'.
Leading enterprises are demonstrating the path: Dongjun Textile produces 1 billion meters of umbrella fabric annually with a 60% domestic share; Kaisheng Footwear makes 11 million pairs of NIKE shoes; Yian Sports holds 33% of the global high-end helmet market; Shuofang Sports produces 10 million ball products. These firms not only bring output but also accumulate technologies like water-free printing, functional finishing, and lamination, providing process support for end-product development.