East/west divide addressed at Chinese leather seminar
In its seminar "Making Bishan China’s Western Shoe Centre", convened in Bishan County, Chongqing city, last week, the China Leather Industry Association revealed the county to be one of China’s fastest–developing centres for footwear production.
Bishan County has a long history of shoe production and trade. However, with the injection of government capital in recent years, its leather shoe industry has expanded massively. Today, Bishan is home to more than 1800 leather shoe-making factories, which together produce over 50 million pairs of leather shoes a year.
Delegates heard that during 2000, the shoe trade accounted for 35% of the county’s gross revenue, and that during 2001 output is expected to increase by a further 25% in dollar value terms.
Although China is now the world’s largest shoe-making nation, the industry is far less developed in the west of the country than it is in the east.
While cities on the eastern seaboard such as Wenzhou and Jinjiang continue to forge ahead as international centres of footwear production, those in the West have been far less successful in tapping into global demand. During the seminar, Bishan County was put forward as a model for how other shoe producing regions in the east can develop using government funds as their catalyst.
