The scale and diversity of party-building activities among leading textile enterprises around July 1st this year have gone beyond mere commemoration. A common signal emerges from the disclosed activities of over ten major firms including Shenghong, Weiqiao, Erdos, Dasheng, Hongdou, Hengli, and Tongkun: party building is transitioning from a political task to a management tool, embedded into core operations such as talent pipeline development, management process optimization, and corporate culture reshaping.
Diversified Forms and Scale of Activities
Based on public information, these activities cover a wide range from commendations to study tours, from party lectures to cultural performances. On June 30, Shenghong Holding Group held a commendation conference where Party Secretary Miao Hangen proposed a "four-combination" deployment, explicitly requiring the integration of party building with business, management system optimization, work style construction, and talent cultivation. Erdos Group operates a red network of 13 party committees, 8 general party branches, and 92 party branches, involving 1,956 party members, and has already received multiple external honors.
Dasheng Group's event carried special historical significance—its June 27 conference also marked the centennial of the Nantong Independent Party Branch's founding within Dasheng Cotton Mill, indicating a century-old tradition of party building in the enterprise. Hongdou Group chose its June 29 morning meeting for Party Secretary Zhou Haijiang to deliver a lecture on the Yan'an Spirit, directly aligning its four dimensions with the company's development path. Weiqiao's chorus concert on the evening of June 30 attracted over 2,000 employees on-site, demonstrating its scale.
From Ritual to Management Effectiveness
Notably, these activities are not merely formalities. Shenghong's "four-combination" framework, which links party building with "management system optimization" and "talent cultivation," directly addresses internal governance pain points. In the context of overcapacity, export volatility, and shrinking profit margins in the textile industry, leveraging the party building system to strengthen discipline, reduce communication costs, and enhance execution becomes a form of implicit competitiveness.
Tongkun Group's red study tour chose Zunyi, where Party Secretary Xu Jinxiang and Deputy Party Secretary Chen Lei led over 650 party members to retrace the Long March. The group's top management equated the "Tongkun Spirit" of unity, pragmatism, innovation with the Long March Spirit, emphasizing that "no matter how difficult the road, as long as people are united and steps are steady, we can definitely get through." This rhetoric carries strong motivational significance during the industry's cyclical downturn.
Dali Silk's party-building activities showcased a cultural empowerment angle: artisans created red silk cultural and creative products using damask as paper and warp/weft as brushes. This combination of party building with intangible cultural heritage techniques and brand storytelling could open new cultural marketing avenues. Hengli Group's red light-and-shadow creative performance competition at its Suzhou Industrial Park allowed 12 party branches to adapt classic red films into original performances, with the innovative format lowering employee participation barriers.
Actual Impact on Operations and Potential Challenges
What does deep integration of party building into management mean for textile enterprises? First, in terms of talent, multiple companies explicitly use party building as a mechanism for talent screening and development. Shenghong emphasizes "combining party building with talent cultivation to build a talent reserve system," while Dasheng Group requires branch secretaries to serve as "cultural propagandists." This implies that political literacy is becoming an implicit promotion criterion among grassroots employees.
Second, in management processes, the integration of party building with "management system optimization" may drive companies to establish more transparent decision-making mechanisms and stricter accountability systems. Erdos Group's "Four First-Step" demonstration leadership is essentially a management pre-positioning: letting party members take the lead in key positions and critical links.
However, challenges persist. If party-building activities become overly formalistic or disconnected from production and operations, they risk becoming a "two-skin" problem. Based on the disclosed information, most companies are aware of this and attempt to make party-building goals concrete and quantifiable through vehicles like "key projects" and "secretary-led initiatives." Dasheng Group's annual key project release is an attempt to directly link party-building outcomes with production and operational indicators.
Industry Implications: Transforming Red Genes into Market Competitiveness
As a fully competitive traditional manufacturing sector, textiles have long struggled with low profit margins and severe homogeneity. The intensive party-building activities may increase organizational costs in the short term, but if executed properly, they can translate into three layers of competitiveness:
- **Organizational Resilience**: Strengthening internal communication and mobilization capabilities through the party-building network enables faster unified action when facing shocks like raw material price hikes or order fluctuations.
- **Talent Stability**: In an industry facing recruitment and retention difficulties, the sense of belonging and honor provided by party-building activities helps reduce turnover among core employees.
- **Brand Premium**: As demonstrated by Dali Silk's cultural creations, party-building stories can become part of brand narratives, shaping a responsible corporate image in both domestic and international markets.