China’s manufacturers fear they ‘can’t survive another round’ of coronavirus outbreaks, lockdowns
- Travel restrictions to limit the spread of the coronavirus are causing disruptions to logistics and supply chains, while ports are also experiencing delays
- Imports suffered their first fall in 18 months in March, and there are rising concerns that restrictions will weigh on exports and economic growth
Fabric weaver Tony Xie never expected that moving his products from one side of the road to the other would be mission impossible.
Normally, it would be a simple process to transport the white fabrics that his factory produces to the printing-and-dyeing plant across the road, where patterns and colours are added for his overseas customers.
“There are some small factories that dare to violate the pandemic controls, secretly using people to smuggle rolls of fabric to the printing and dyeing facilities for processing,” Xie said. “But it is impossible for us to do this, with more than 20 containers of semi-finished products.”
There are many difficulties in running a business right now, like the shortage of orders or capital chain, the soaring prices of raw materials or logistics, these all make sense, but now it’s just nonsense
It should have been a rosy start to the year for Xie to process orders from South Asia, Africa and the Middle East after the Lunar New Year holiday in February.
But Xie said “the supply chain has been completely cut off since the middle of March”, due to the Omicron wave in Shanghai that has spread to and disrupted the neighbouring Yangtze River Delta region, which features the most skilled industrial chain and city clusters in China.