Dear readers

China-Africa cooperation is headlined in any forms， visual， video， paper-print or digital， of footage， coverage， and reportage as FOCAC kicks off in Beijing in September when Beijing Summit of Forum of China-Africa Cooperation rolls out in red-carpet welcome to more than 3，200 leaders and representatives from Africa and regional organizations for this significant gathering. To follow the suit， the representatives from textile industry stand out in overseas investment to outsource production in recent years that witness a growing momentum in Africa.

In fact， Chinese textile investors have established various off-shore operations in a vertically-integrated value chain from farm to fashion， to be more exact， from natural fibers and chemical fibers all way down to their finished goods in apparel， home-textile and tech-textile applications in an increased value input especially in the countries aligned along Belt and Road Initiative （BARI） chart. Statistics show that our textile players have laid out overseas operations along BARI-lined countries and regions in value size that rose from 429 million dollars in 2013 to 2.3 billion dollars in 2016， and the first three months of 2017 witnessed 748 million dollars， overtaking the whole year of 2014. Taken together， the overseas investment from our textile and apparel industry added up to 2.837 billion dollars from the Mainland China， with exception to the outgoing investment in textile and apparel sectors from Taiwan-， Macau-， and Hong Kong China.

Africa is an ideal place of interest for investors from Chinese textile and apparel manufacturing industry as it is endowed with abundant raw material supply， and African cotton is applaudable for the improved measures to be applied to its farm management and quality control. Chinese spinners have already set up yarn production facilities in many African countries， the growing interest is steamed up by Chinese BARI strategy and the cooperation projects that have already borne fruits and by China-Africa good relationship which is already shown at Beijing Summit of FOCAC （Forum of China-Africa Cooperation ） . This goodwill relationship shall be backed up by great ambitions to build up a shared future on win-win effect， buttressed with incentive policies and workable constructions as is encouraged and endorsed by the Eight Major Initiatives with African countries in a keynote speech made by Chinese President， Xi Jinping. The eight major initiatives relate to industrial promotion， infrastructure connectivity， trade facilitation， green development， capacity building， health care， people-topeople exchanges， peace and security.

Chinese textile industry is very proactive in carrying out these major initiatives with corporate compliant codes of conduct and increase investment not only in physical capacity building by brics-and-motar operations， but also in skill training capacity building for local operators to take part in the new tide of industrial revolution. The 83-people delegation organized by China Textile and Apparel Council to attend ITMFs conference in Kenya is an action that speaks louder .

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Editor-in-Chief

Sept. 2018