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Tales from the Development Frontier
Tradition. Dieshiqiao is located in Haimen, on the outskirts of
Nantong City. This area has a long history of cultivating and processing cotton, jute, and silk. Haimen is the home of the prominent scholarentrepreneur Zhang Jian (1853–1926), a top graduate in national civil service examinations who later became one of China’s first industrialists. Jiangsu ranks among China’s leading cotton producers. Nantong, along with other districts in southern Jiangsu Province, was a leading center of the handicraft textile industry during the Qing Dynasty. Jiangsu and Shanghai pioneered the expansion of factory textile production in the decades prior to World War II; their leadership in the manufacture of cotton goods continued after 1949. As a result, the local populace included many individuals with knowledge and experience in all aspects of cotton textiles, from cotton cultivation, yarn and cloth manufacture, embroidery, and other craft skills to distribution and marketing. Local residents who had worked in state-owned textile factories, which maintain a prominent presence in Jiangsu, provided technical expertise at the early stages of cluster development. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that small-scale production and trade included activity in the textile and embroidery sectors. Beginning in the mid-1950s, small numbers of villagers were producing, buying, and selling textile materials and products in Dieshiqiao markets. Emboldened by the local government’s policy of benign neglect, the budding industry gradually expanded, leading to the spontaneous, unplanned formation of a distribution center for locally made textile-related products. By the 1970s, long before the local government took an active role in promoting local business expansion, Dieshiqiao had developed a burgeoning industrial cluster revolving around the embroidery trade. Entrepreneurship. While we have no detailed accounts of the initial
stages of home textile development in Dieshiqiao, information about Mingchao, a local firm that grew from start-up to national and international prominence within 15 years, illustrates the verve and ambition of small-scale Chinese entrepreneurs. Landmarks of Mingchao’s development include the following:
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1992: Mingchao founder Hu Mingliang accumulates Y 1,500 ($272) and assembles a small number of friends and neighbors to undertake a home textile business.