Agglomeration is an important characteristic in China’s textile industry development. But regional textile industry isseriously unbalanced, only eastern location entropy (LQ) is greater than 1 and is the highest of all, followed by thecentral, western and north-eastern regions. Total factor productivity (TFP) is an important indicator to measure theeconomic growth efficiency. The average annual growth rate (AAGR) of eastern textile industry TFP is the least andcentral TFP growth rate is the fastest. In order to investigate the relationship between agglomeration and TFP of China’stextile industry, especially at region level, this paper applies panel model to study how agglomeration influences TFPduring 2005–2018. The results show that increasing agglomeration degree restrains the TFP growth of China’s textileindustry. The coefficients of LQ on textile industry in China and four regions are all negative. There exists crowded effectin eastern textile industry. It has not formed the significant agglomeration effect in western and north-eastern textileindustry for very low agglomeration degree. So it implies that eastern textile industry can accelerate the implementationof industrial transfer and structural adjustment to lower agglomeration and maintain sustained profitability of textileenterprises. Western textile industry can strengthen agglomeration by undertaking industrial transfer from eastern regionto form agglomeration effect to promote TFP growth.

Is China’s textile industry (CTI) still a laboor-intensive one? To answer this question, this study measures the capital-labour intensity and technology intensity of CTI and its sub-sectors during 2006-2018, then applies factor intensity classification and cluster analysis to identify their industrial attributes. The results show that CTI and its sub-sectors are still the labour- and non-technology-intensive. All the indexes of capital-labour intensity and technology intensity of CTI and its sub-sectors are below 100, lower than the average of industry sectors, indicating that they are not separate from the category of labour-intensive industry and still heavily dependent on labour. And cluster analysis verifies the industrial classification results. So CTI still needs to keep on increasing its capital intensity and technology intensity to achieve the goal of industrial transformation and upgrading in the future.

In this study, the Input-Output Structural Decomposition Analysis (I-O SDA) method is adopted to analyze the structural change in China’s textile industry during 1997-2012 and to measure the contribution rate of the growth factors (consumption, investment, inventory, exports and imports) affecting change in its gross output. Then the key factors and main driving forces promoting textile industry development are figured out. The results show that China’s textile industry has experienced great change both in scale and structure. Among the growth factors, the contribution rate of exports is the largest, followed by investment, consumption, imports and inventory. The textile industry still relies heavily on exports, investment and consumption, while the contribution rate of imports is relatively small. In addition, technological change makes a positive contribution with technological innovation. Among the industrial sectors, the cotton & chemical fibre textile industry holds dominance, with the textile manufactured goods industry exhibiting tremendous development, the growth of the knitted textile industry fluctuating, and the wool textile industry and hemp & silk textile industry progressing slowly. Finally relevant policy suggestions are proposed to promote the balanced and coordinated development of China’s textile industry.

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The rise in China of a middle peasant economy, which differs from the pattern of development of capitalistic agriculture emphasized by mainstream theory, holds out the prospect of the development of small-scale agriculture in China. In some villages where foodgrain crops are the main products, the middle peasant economy with an appropriate scale of farmland, resulting from spontaneous and reciprocal land transfers among peasants, and relying on the use of family labor, can achieve the spontaneous transformation and development of the small peasant economy, expand agricultural employment, increase the income of peasants, and also improve the organizational ability of peasants. If carried out on a wide scale, this will fundamentally change the reality of China’s agriculture as “involutionary” and lead to the development of agriculture and prosperity in rural society. The middle peasant economy demonstrates the potential for development within rural society with peasants as the main force, which will not only transform the countryside but also have a significant impact on the development of the national economy. 不同于主流理论所强调的资本主义农业发展模式，中农经济的兴起，展示出了我国小规模农业发展的另一种前景：在以生产传统主粮作物为主的普通村庄，通过农户间自发的、互惠性土地流转，并依托于家庭劳动力的自我开发，所形成的适度规模经营的中农经济，能够实现小农经济自发的转型升级，扩大农业就业，增加农民收入，提高农民的组织能力，并将从根本上改变了我国农业的过密化现实，实现农业的发展和乡村的繁荣。中农经济实现了以农民为主体的农业和农村发展，充分体现了农村内部实现发展的潜力，这对于国民经济的发展有着重要的影响。 (This article is in English.)