When Dalang town party secretary Dong Tie stated at the conference that 'ancient dyeing techniques should add cultural depth to knitwear products,' the audience included not only heritage inheritors but also hundreds of knitwear business owners whose annual revenues hover around the 100 million yuan mark. For them, the 10th Textile Intangible Cultural Heritage Conference held in Dongguan's Dalang was less a cultural event and more a signal for industrial breakthrough.
Dalang's industrial identity is stark: it produces 900 million sweaters annually, accounting for one in five globally. Among its GDP of 47.37 billion yuan, the knitwear sector is the absolute pillar. Yet the flip side is that this 'loom-humming' industrial cluster faces growth bottlenecks—volatile foreign trade orders, domestic consumption upgrades forcing product iteration, and homogenized competition squeezing profit margins. Against this backdrop, the conference theme 'Heritage Symbiosis, Weaving the Future' appears notably pragmatic.
Event Background
The conference opened on June 24, running concurrently with the China (Dalang) Knitwear Products Trade Fair and the 95th International Wool Conference, creating a synergistic effect of 'professional exhibition + cultural event + cultural tourism experience.' Co-hosted by the China National Textile and Apparel Council and Dalang Town Government, it attracted representatives from regulatory bodies, industry associations, universities, and enterprises.
The signing sessions were the most direct industrial landing points, covering five dimensions:
- Heritage standards: CNTAC's Heritage Office and Zhonglian Pinjian signed the 'Textile Heritage Standards and Certification Cooperation,' providing standardized endorsement for marketization of heritage products
- Industry innovation: Five local enterprises, including Impression Prairie and Tongfa Knitting, signed the 'Strategic Cooperation on Textile Heritage and Knitwear Product Innovation' with designers and heritage inheritors
- Quality system upgrade: Dalang knitwear industry quality service system co-building agreement was signed
- Brand supply-demand synergy: Brand supply-demand service cooperation agreement was finalized
- Space expansion: The WanShang Smart Manufacturing Center signed a park entry agreement with Jiangyin Hengxiang Weaving
These signings cover the full chain from standard-setting to end-market, not just slogans. Notably, the push for heritage standard certification means 'heritage craft' could become a quantifiable, traceable premium label for knitwear products.
Industrial Impact
Why does Dalang need intangible heritage? The answer lies in changing consumer behavior. CNTAC president Sun Ruizhe highlighted the key in his speech: consumers are increasingly focused on health, self-expression, and emotional connection. In other words, the model of competing purely on capacity and price is exhausted; brands must offer 'wearable cultural assets.'
The fashion show's three chapters—'Lin Qi,' 'Lin Xing,' and 'Lin Yao'—demonstrated this logic in practice. Local leading enterprises used Lingnan heritage Qilin motifs as core design elements, crafted by China's top ten fashion designer Wang Dong, with the entire process from creative extraction to industrial production completed in Dalang. This sends a clear signal: heritage is not a museum specimen but a mass-producible, marketable fashion item.
For buyers and factories, this means the value-added space of the supply chain is being redefined. In the past, profit per sweater came mainly from yarn cost and processing efficiency; in the future, the premium power of cultural empowerment will become a new competitive dimension. Dalang's 'Knitting Fair' builds global trade bridges, the International Wool Conference brings cutting-edge perspectives, and the Heritage Conference injects cultural core—together, they are essentially building a new industrial ecosystem from raw materials to end products, from production to brand.