When textile intangible heritage moves from exhibition cases into assembly lines, the industry is undergoing a quiet value reassessment. On June 24, Dongguan's Dalang simultaneously launched the 10th Textile Intangible Heritage Conference, the 23rd China (Dalang) Knitting Products Fair, and the 95th International Wool Conference. Behind this triple event is an industrial experiment led by the China National Textile and Apparel Council and Dalang Town Government: deeply coupling thousand-year-old weaving techniques with a modern cluster that produces 900 million sweaters annually. Dalang's GDP is 47.37 billion yuan, and one in five sweaters globally originates here. But beyond the numbers, this conference attempts to answer a fundamental question: when manufacturing scale peaks, can culture become a new growth engine?
Event Background
The theme 'Heritage Symbiosis, Weaving the Future' is far from empty rhetoric. Judging by the five strategic agreements signed on site, Dalang's approach is pragmatic: textile heritage standards and certification cooperation, heritage-knitting product innovation strategy, quality service system co-building, brand supply-demand service cooperation, and investment attraction agreements. These cover the entire chain from standard-setting to market monetization. This means intangible heritage is no longer merely a 'face project' for cultural departments but has been integrated into the hard framework of industrial upgrading. The participation of representatives from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Consumer Goods Industry Department and the International Wool Textile Organization indicates this model has gained attention from central government to international levels.
Dalang Party Secretary Dong Tie's concept of 'wearable cultural assets' precisely captures current consumer market trends. Sun Ruizhe, President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, noted that consumers increasingly focus on health, well-being, and emotional connection, requiring companies to convert cultural resources into brand value. For buyers and factories, this is no longer a distant vision: once standardized certification is in place, a sweater with heritage elements could command a 30% or higher premium over ordinary products, and more easily penetrate European and American markets that value cultural narratives.
Industry Impact
The most striking segment of the conference was the heritage fashion show presented by leading local enterprises including Impression Prairie, Tongfa, Xinhongfeng, and Lanmei. The show centered on Lingnan-style qilin patterns, a proprietary design from local artisan Wan Gongxue. The involvement of China's Top Ten Fashion Designer Wang Dong completed the loop from heritage creativity extraction to industrial-scale production. This 'Dalang design, Dalang manufacturing, Dalang presentation' model is essentially a regional brand premium strategy—it integrates scattered heritage crafts into a replicable supply chain capability, enabling small and medium factories to leverage a unified cultural IP for orders.
For the textile industry, Dalang's practice sends at least two key signals. First, heritage standardization is accelerating. The 'Textile Heritage Standards and Certification Cooperation' signed between CNTAC's Heritage Office and CCIC Testing means heritage products will have authoritative quality and authenticity endorsements, directly reducing cross-border compliance costs and consumer trust issues for foreign trade companies. Second, industrial chain collaboration is moving from rhetoric to contracts. From the 'Textile Heritage and Knitting Product Innovation Strategy Cooperation' to 'Brand Supply-Demand Service Cooperation,' signatories include town governments, enterprises, designers, and inheritors, forming a community of shared interests and risks. For knitting industry clusters long plagued by homogenization, this 'culture + manufacturing + trade' bundling model could be a key breakthrough.