THE city’s textile and clothing industries have been developed this year. Jifa Group became one of the Top 500 foreign trade enterprises in China in 2010, while Qingdao Textile Group has upgraded all its manufacturing equipment to increase its efficiency and quality. Meanwhile, companies such as Hongling Group and Hongni Group have upgraded their facilities to speed up their development. Many textile and clothing companies have already started working on independent innovation. At present, there are three national-level textile company technology centers in Qingdao and more than 70 percent of the companies have built technology centers. There are also eight nationwide brands and 35 provincial brands of Shandong. With the promotion of independent innovation and independent brands, the added values of the products have also been increased step by step. The city will next promote the textile companies’ exchanges and communications with domestic and foreign companies through exhibitions and trade fairs, helping the companies to exploit markets and winning orders. In the first five months of this year, the production value of the city’s 738 textile companies reached 55.27 billion yuan, increasing by 17.7 percent compared with the same period last year, accounting for 12.9 percent in the city’s seven core industries and 11.2 percent in the city’s total production value. ?(Wang Yuanyuan, Lin Gang) ? | 