An industrial cluster producing 900 million sweaters annually is attempting to rewrite its growth logic by leveraging millennia-old intangible cultural heritage (ICH). On June 24, the 10th Textile ICH Conference opened in Dalang, Dongguan, alongside the 23rd China (Dalang) Knitwear Trade Fair and the 95th International Wool Conference. The triple-event signals a clear shift: Dalang knitwear is no longer content being the world's largest OEM sweater hub; it aims to inject cultural premium into every garment.
Industrial Foundation and Cultural Leverage
Dalang town, located at Dongguan's geometric center, has a GDP of 47.37 billion yuan. Supporting this figure are the 900 million sweaters shipped from local factories each year—one out of every five sweaters globally originates here. This is a classic scale-driven cluster, but scale alone no longer sustains margin growth. Sun Ruizhe, President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, pinpointed the industry's pain point: consumers are increasingly focused on health, self-expression, and emotional connection. The era of competing solely on volume is over; those who embed cultural narratives into products will command pricing power.
Dalang's choice is to leverage ICH as a cultural lever. Qu Hongqi, Vice Chairman of Dongguan CPPCC, positioned the textile and garment industry as a key pillar of Dongguan's '8+8+4' modern industrial system, with Dalang knitwear as its flagship. The triple-event launch is essentially an integration experiment: the Trade Fair handles commercial matching, the ICH Conference provides cultural empowerment, and the International Wool Conference brings global technical insights. The trio aims to achieve a transition from manufacturing to branding within the same time and space.
From Signing to Implementation: A Five-Dimension Closed Loop
The multiple agreements signed at the opening ceremony go beyond symbolic gestures; they form a complete value chain. The CNTAC ICH Office and UTT signed the 'Textile ICH Standards and Certification Cooperation'. This shifts ICH products from workshop-style reputation to quantifiable industry standards. For buyers, standardized ICH labels mean lower trust costs and higher premium potential.
More practically, the 'Strategic Cooperation on ICH and Knitwear Product Innovation Development' was signed. Partners include industry associations, local government, leading companies like Impression Prairie, Tongfa, Xinhongfeng, and Lanmei, as well as top-10 fashion designer Wang Dong and local ICH inheritor Wan Gongxue. This is a multi-party model: government sets the stage, enterprises execute, designers enable, and inheritors provide cultural IP. Wan's Qilin pattern, a patented product that won the Shanhua Award, provides a basis for IP protection in industrial production.
Other agreements cover quality service systems, brand-supply chain matching, and factory park investment (e.g., Hengxiang Weaving entering the Guangshang Smart Manufacturing Center). From standards to design, from quality to market, from cultural IP to production space, this signing constructs a relatively complete upgrade loop.
Cultural Runway Behind Industrial Logic
The ICH fashion show at the opening was structured into three chapters: 'Qilin Awakening,' 'Qilin Walking,' and 'Qilin Shining.' The core design element is the Lingnan Qilin pattern. The show strictly adhered to the 'Dalang design, Dalang production, Dalang presentation' principle. Participating factories—Impression Prairie, Tongfa, Xinhongfeng, Lanmei—are all local; designer Wang Dong emerged from the Dalang Knitwear Design Competition. This means the entire supply chain—from creativity to sampling, from fabric to garment—is closed within Dalang.
For foreign buyers, this is a notable shift. Previously, orders were placed based on lead time and unit price. Now, factories offer 'cultural value-added' options: plant-dyed cashmere, crossovers between Song brocade and Xiangyun silk, exclusive Qilin pattern licenses. These elements are increasingly attractive to Western buyers and brands, as end consumers show higher willingness to pay for products with a story.