On August 7, Sun Ruizhe, president of China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC) delivered a comprehensive speech at the association’s mid-year working meeting. He observed that the industry now faces change that has moved “from external to internal”. Past attention focused on international dynamics, technological revolutions, and market demand, whereas today’s changes concern “the reshaping of the association’s development logic, the transformation of its operating model, and the renewal of its capability structure”.

The current stage of industry association development is marked by deeper reform, governance restructuring, and service transformation. In response to profound changes in the policy environment, technological landscape, enterprise structure, consumer demand, and regional development patterns, associations need to reshape their capabilities and service systems around six key variables.

1. Institutional Boundaries: From “What Can Be Done” to “How It Should Be Done Properly”

New regulatory requirements are further clarifying the operational boundaries of industry associations. Associations should strengthen Party leadership, compliance-based governance, and transparency, turning sound governance into credibility and competitiveness. At the same time, they should return to the essence of public service and use professional capabilities to address common industry challenges and the practical needs of enterprises.

2. Artificial Intelligence: From Traditional Services to Intelligent Services

AI is reshaping R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and organizational structures, while also creating new challenges in data governance, scenario adaptation, compliance, and security. Associations should help enterprises understand new technologies, identify application scenarios, and reduce transformation costs, while also accelerating their own adoption of AI to improve the efficiency of data, knowledge, and organizational operations.

3. Market Players: From Uniform Member Services to a Multi-Level Service Ecosystem

Leading enterprises, SMEs, emerging brands, cross-border businesses, and new forms of individual entrepreneurship now coexist, creating increasingly diverse service needs. Associations should provide differentiated services for different types of enterprises, promote collaboration among large, medium-sized, and small businesses, and strengthen support in international rules, overseas compliance, brand communication, and globalization.

4. Technology and Culture: From Single-Dimension Technological Innovation to Integrated Innovation

Industrial competition is shifting from cost and scale toward basic research, interdisciplinary innovation, scenario-based applications, and cultural value creation. Associations should promote the commercialization of technological achievements and the development of future industries, while also strengthening original design, cultural resource transformation, and intellectual property protection.

5. Consumer Trends: From Supply-Oriented Services to Demand- and Scenario-Oriented Services

Consumption is shifting from a focus on price-performance considerations toward quality, experience, emotional value, and lifestyle. Association services therefore need to extend further toward the consumer end, with greater emphasis on trend research, standards development, product innovation, scenario creation, and cross-sector collaboration, while also upgrading traditional services such as exhibitions and market platforms.

6. Regional Economy: From Single-Point Clustering to Networked Regional Collaboration

The development of a unified national market, new quality productive forces, and new infrastructure is reshaping the regional distribution of industry. Associations should move beyond a narrow focus on individual enterprises and industrial parks and pay greater attention to industrial networks, regional coordination, and the allocation of new production factors, helping different regions build complementary strengths and more efficient collaborative development models.

Ultimately, the transformation of industry associations lies in strengthening governance through standardization, reshaping capabilities through technological change, expanding service boundaries in response to market evolution, and creating new value through the integration of technology, culture, consumption, and regional collaboration.

Source: CHINA TEXTILE LEADER Express