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Home to the fast fashion industry with thousands of workshops and factories, urban villages in Guangzhou face a reckoning as authorities look to impose order on the chaos. Textile industry insiders are calling for a nuanced approach to ensure the stability of a pillar industry

By Yang Zhijie Updated Jan.1

An overhead view of Kanglu in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province. In the center sits a covered labor market, where textile bosses come every day to ffnd day workers, who live and work in the cramped urban village, March 13, 2024 (Photo by CNS)

Every morning at the crack of dawn, workers from Lujiang Village rush to a former soccer pitch. Now a labor market, garment factory representatives stand in a circle facing outward, each holding a sample. Hundreds of job seekers march slowly forward, comparing the style and stitching, figuring out how many pieces they can sew in a day, and how much they will earn.　

Textile factory owner Zhou Hui told NewsChina that she can tell reliable and hardworking workers at first glance. “I like hiring couples. They bring their own food and water and they’re determined to land a job no matter what.”　

Lujiang and its neighbor Kangle Village in Haizhu District of Guangzhou, capital of South China’s Guangdong Province, are known collectively as Kanglu. The villages mushroomed haphazardly around Zhongda Textile Market, the biggest textile trade market in China, often referred to as “China’s Milan.”A cluster of buildings containing hundreds of vendors and producers, the area has nearly 20,000 clothing factories and workshops, attracting hundreds of thousands of laborers from all over the country. Its trade volume has surpassed 200 billion yuan (US$27.6b) a year, about one-third of China’s total textile auxiliary materials trade volume, and it sells over 100,000 types of products.　

The villages are a noisy concentration of unplanned small alleys and houses with multiple extra stories and floors subdivided into small rooms, rented through a chaotic network of landlords and subletters. The housing density is so great, sunlight barely penetrates the streets.　

Now Kanglu is facing a transformation as authorities wish to improve the living conditions and upgrade the industry, a plan that has been delayed for over 10 years. There were worries that the transformation would hamper this local pillar industry that thrived on unbridled development. But eventually, on December 31, 2023, two buildings in Kangle Village were the first to be demolished. The process is kicking up a gear. On July 24, construction started on two plots of cleared land in Kanglu.　

On August 19, shops opposite Zhou’s factory were closed and cleared out, with the familiar Chinese character chai, meaning “demolition,” painted in red on the walls. Zhou’s factory is still operating, but she is anxious. “We’ll move if we have to. But we can’t leave here,” she said.

Made in Kanglu

Zhou comes from Xiantao in Hubei Province, almost 1,000 kilometers to the north. She came to Guangzhou to work in textiles 30 years ago. Now she owns a 300-square-meter factory. Many others in Kanglu followed the same path from worker to owner through decades of hard work.　

As a clothing manufacturing center, many of Guangzhou’s districts have their own niche. Panyu District is known for higher quality clothing, a main supplier for big wholesale markets and fast fashion platforms like Shein. Zengcheng District is famous for denim clothes. Kanglu stands out for its speed.　

Those in the industry told NewsChina that if an item of clothing causes ripples in the fashion world one day, the next day it appears on the market, made in Kanglu.　

Like Zhou, nearly everyone involved in textiles in Kanglu comes from Hubei. Liang Fubin from the Hubei Chamber of Commerce in Guangdong (HCCG) told NewsChina that it might take factories elsewhere a month to fulfill an order of 10,000 pieces. In Kanglu, 10 days is enough.　

Kanglu mainly produces fast fashion women’s wear. The orders are small and urgent as clothing stores try to reduce inventory risk. Zhou gets a lot of orders through livestream channels on short-video platform Douyin. Ranging from hundreds of pieces to a thousand per order, there is only a day to finish them, so the buyers can get the products and ship them to consumers within 48 hours as they usually promise. Livestreamers start contacting manufacturers and buying textiles even before the livestream ends, Zhou said.　

Zhou receives the pattern and materials within an hour of accepting an order. She goes to the labor market to recruit day workers, who start around 9 am but might not finish until midnight. Then she goes out to the street to find more workers to do the finishing touches, like fixing tags and ironing. She expects to ship the order before dawn.　

Proximity is everything for Kanglu’s signature efficiency. The fabric market is one street away. In the villages there are factories for everything else, from buttons to zippers to fabric printing. Below Zhou’s factory are stalls that make accessories or provide other processes, such as pre-shrinking. According to the HCCG, the area has nearly 20,000 garment and accessory factories and other clothing related companies, including unlicensed workshops.　

Scooters are the most important means of transportation, as only they can wend their way at high speeds laden with goods through the narrow alleys.　

Kanglu is the only textile zone where factories operate around the clock, as other districts like Baiyun and Panyu only have day shifts. But in Kanglu, older female workers wait on the streets even in the small hours for finishing work.　

Due to the uncertainty of orders, most factories in Kanglu hire day workers to reduce their costs. They are paid by piece and receive their money at the end of the shift. The Kanglu workforce is highly motivated and considered more efficient than in other areas. In April, one young worker worked 18 hours from 6 am to 12 pm and got 2,033 yuan (US$287). He was dubbed the “daily work master” for earning so much more than the average, usually several hundred yuan a day.

Workers fulffll orders in a garment factory in Kanglu, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, August 19, 2024 (Photo by CNS)

Factory owners with signs seek workers on a main road in Kanglu, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, August 19, 2024 (Photo by CNS)

Stitch in Time

The high efficiency comes at a sacrifice. Living conditions are poor, and both workers and factory owners have to live in confined spaces, saving more time for work.　

Ahui, who arrived in Kanglu two years ago, said the room he rents for 800 yuan (US$113) a month is only seven square meters, barely enough for a bed and a tiny bathroom. Another room in a nearby building is eight square meters, but one would have to pay double because the landlord installed an elevator.　

This situation is common. The rooms are dark and damp. Their clothes do not dry. But Ahui has never considered moving because time is more important. Finding better accommodation might mean commuting two hours a day. “If I live in the village, I can earn a day’s rent just by working one extra hour,” Ahui said.　

Though only 1.1 square kilometers in size, the combined villages that make up Kanglu are a self-sufficient world. There are supermarkets, a wet market, restaurants, massage parlors and barbers. Residents do not need to go far from where they live and work to find all they need. As a result, the population has a density as high as 118,000 people per square kilometer, Southern Metropolis Daily reported in December 2023. The average population density for Guangzhou is around 2,000 people per square kilometer.　

Before the soccer pitch became a labor market, tens of thousands of recruiters and job-seekers crowded the streets of Kanglu every morning, causing gridlock. Life and work blend together seamlessly here. The buildings, ranging from villagers’ homes and commercial spaces to collective properties and temporary structures, serve multiple purposes without clear distinctions in use.　

Villagers add five or six stories to their rooftops to get more rent. Garment factories are scattered in these self-built buildings, perhaps housing 10 workshops in one six-story building. Some are used for manufacturing in the day and as a dormitory at night.　

The buildings are so packed that they are called “handshake buildings,” which means people can shake hands from the window of the next-door building. A clothing worker who has lived in the village for over 10 years said that the houses are old and not soundproof. He hopes the transformation will lead to better housing.　

“Such urban villages develop freely, or wildly, to some extent,” said Li Xiaojiang, former director of the China Academy of Urban Planning & Design, who conducted an investigation into Kanglu in March. There has been little intervention or investment by the government in the area, mostly due to vague property ownership, but there are big safety concerns.　

In many factories NewsChina visited, workers were smoking on the production floor. Despite the safety risks, employers tolerate it, because as day workers with no contract, they can leave whenever they want if they are not happy. This leaves factory bosses facing unfinished orders.　

In Zhou’s factory, high-powered machinery and air conditioners run off the same electric cable, which cuts out at peak periods. Old wires have caused many fires in the past. Local officials showed NewsChina documents that said in the past three years, more than half of fires in Kanglu were caused by electrical faults, though they did not provide figures. The area was also heavily hit during the Covid-19 outbreak at the end of 2022 due to the dense population and inadequate sanitation.　

Jiang Hao, founder of the Guangzhou Modern City Renewal Industry Development Center (GRID), which is involved in the planning for the transformation of Kanglu, told NewsChina that besides safety hazards, function and transportation flows must be considered when deciding whether to redevelop areas. Kanglu sits right in the middle of Haizhu District, which has tech giants and traditional industries at the eastern and western ends, blocking the artery. “It hinders the development of Haizhu District and should be transformed,” Jiang said.　

According to Wei Huili, executive manager of GRID, Kanglu is at a point of transformation because the garment industry is going through a process of natural selection due to fierce competition from e-commerce and the development of garment markets in other regions.　

Li Xiaojiang is more prudent. He believes that since Kanglu is a link in the industrial chain, authorities need to consider if there are substitutes after it is redeveloped. He said the garment industry is a core industry for Guangzhou and the country, while the big fabric markets and surrounding garment villages are the central hub and back end.　

He admitted that Kanglu must change, but it should be gradual. “The authorities should think more about tolerating the development of urban villages and eliminating safety concerns, not simply demolishing and reconstructing,” Li said. He worries that large-scale demolition and construction might destroy the industry and force large numbers of people to leave.

People with scooters pass through a narrow alley in Kanglu, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, August 2024 (Photo by CNS)

A garment workshop in Kanglu, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, August 2024 (Photo by CNS)

A worker sews garments in a factory in Kanglu, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, August 2024 (Photo by VCG)

Fitted Solutions

In 2022, Haizhu District announced that the garment industry based around the Zhongda Market cluster should shift to Qingyuan, a city in central Guangdong.　

Qin Mian, who came to Guangzhou 11 years ago and owns a 600-squaremeter factory in Lujiang Village, decided to investigate Qingyuan. He found new, spacious factories and cheaper rent than Kanglu. But he is not persuaded of the benefits. “How can it work if you only move the factories and not the suppliers of goods and supporting industries? We could lose our orders,” he said.　

Amid the demolition countdown, some factory bosses considered moving back to Hubei Province. In 2023, places like Xiantao and Jingzhou in Hubei offered policies to support and attract the garment industry. But opening factories in Hubei is not easy either.　

Lin Yisheng, originally from Jingzhou, operates a small workshop near Kanglu with his wife, brother and sister-in-law. His brother tried to establish a business in Jingzhou and took an order for 5,000 garments, but he ended up losing 140,000 yuan (US$19,700). With no local suppliers, he had to ship materials from Guangzhou and pay the freight.　

But the biggest problem was the lack of competent workers. Lin’s brother found that workers in his hometown were slack. He said they played mahjong whenever they liked. The order took him around six weeks to finish, though it was supposed to take 20 days. The customer canceled the order, and he had to sell the finished clothes at a very low price. Lin’s brother said moving to other cities might be suitable for companies with stable orders and workers, but not for them. “We’ve given up on the idea of going back.”　

Liang Fubin of the HCCG visited Qingyuan several times to check it out. He suggested authorities there should attract big garment companies from a national or even global scope, pointing out that companies in Kanglu are small and heavily dependent on the supply chains around the big textile market. In addition, garment wholesale markets and stalls in Shahe, one of the biggest clothing wholesale distribution centers in Guangdong, are highly dependent on garment factories in Kanglu because of its efficiency. “If the capacity in Kanglu shrinks, transfers or disperses, it might also cause the decline of wholesale markets in Shahe and similar places. The whole industrial chain is interdependent,” Liang said.　

Authorities are weighing the pros and cons. Liang said that since July 2023, attitudes from Haizhu District and Qingyuan have shifted over requiring textile firms to move, a signal that some industry could remain in Kanglu and even in downtown Guangzhou.　

Jiang Hao believes that authorities should neither force industry out nor keep things as they are. He suggests the local government should assess the value of the industries objectively and explore ways to push forward industrial transformation while respecting the present situation.　

As the realities of the slowing economy become apparent, many local governments are reassessing how they deal with labor-intensive industries. There is a new focus on improving conditions instead of trying to replace them with high-end manufacturing.　

In December 2023, Haizhu District approved a development plan which intends to ensure quality companies upgrade on-site. To keep its industrial advantages, the plan proposes to retain some of the key production processes, optimize the structure of companies, build digital supply platforms and emphasize branding and design incubation.　

Xu Lige, general manager of Guangzhou Urban Planning and Design Company Limited, which is involved in the Kanglu redevelopment, told NewsChina that previous village transformation projects in Guangzhou stripped out industry entirely, but the plan for Kanglu will retain dedicated industrial space.　

According to Haizhu District, 1.45 million square meters will be reserved for industrial development.　

Planners are looking at what the final industrial mix will look like in Kanglu. Wei Huili from GRID said that given the limited space, not all factories can stay. Priority will be given to companies that will best contribute to economic growth.　

In the future, garment factories in Kanglu will need to operate in compliance, putting an end to chaotic management. According to Liang Fubin, over 10,000 factories and workshops there run without a license or paying taxes. Daily wage workers do not have employment protections, nor does their salary include contributions for benefits like healthcare or pensions. From placing orders to shipping, the business is mainly conducted through oral contracts.　

In July 2023, Haizhu District’s official in charge of the transformation said in a seminar held by HCCG that garment factories in Kanglu will need to comply with regulations and upgrade in scale. A pilot project near Kanglu is encouraging small workshops to sign up to a digital platform to accept orders online, either in cooperation or independently.　

“It will be like a supermarket full of household brands. The factory can take orders as one or separately, but it will appear as one firm to the outside,” Liang Fubin said. He believes embracing digital transformation will allow small companies to survive and be in compliance. If it works, they hope the program will spread to Kanglu.　

Wei would like to see Kanglu cultivating its own designer brands that take advantage of its efficiency. She stressed the importance of protecting the local industrial ecology featuring small orders and quick responses, including day workers that factories rely on and can find quickly. If the rent rises to thousands of yuan a month after buildings are reconstructed, this will deter the flexible workforce who rely on cheap lodgings.　

“Our team will look at other urban villages nearby to see if the workers can move there. If Haizhu District wants to keep its industrial ecology, it needs to provide affordable accommodation,” Wei said.

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