2025-03-28
41 分钟The Economist. This is an Indonesian textile worker on the national evening news lamenting the closure of his factory and the loss of his job.
He's among nearly 11,000 people who were laid off when Sretex,
the country's largest listed textile firm, ceased all operations on March 1st.
The company, once a key supplier for NATO and the German army,
had been a cornerstone of Indonesia's industrial sector for nearly six decades.
Sretex supplied big global brands like Uniqlo and H&M before its collapse.
And just five years ago,
the firm took nearly $1.3 billion in sales and posted a net profit of $85 million.
Failure didn't come out of the blue.
Sretex had taken on a lot of debt.
and was badly hit by the pandemic.
But the nail in the coffin seems to have been the deluge of cheap textile imports from China,
flooding the market and driving down prices.
The shutdown signals a significant shift in Indonesia's manufacturing landscape,
raising concerns over the future of the country's textile sector.
And it's not just in Indonesia.
The export-based economies of Southeast Asia are all being affected by the economic policies of their giant neighbor.
And it's not limited to the lower-end manufacturing industries either.
Here's Xi Jinping in his latest New Year's message to the Chinese people.
We have fostered new quality productive forces, he says,