China Threatens Afghanistan's Burqa Market ["modern" Made in China burqas taking over the market]

Washington Post ^ | 2/4/08

[charles m]

The bright blue veil of the burqa is one of the most iconic and widely worn pieces of women’s clothing in Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, fewer women wear the burqa in Kabul, but elsewhere, in the provinces, the burqa is as ubiquitous as ever.

The Zamarai family, shown in the video, have been tailors and burqa-makers for three generations. But recently there’s a new player in the Kabul burqa market: China, which mass-produces a style of burqa that many women here find more fashionable than the Zamarais’ traditional hand-assembled garments.

The Chinese-made burqas’ tightly-crimped folds and machine-produced embroidery have become something of a fashion craze in the last few months in Kabul. As one burqa seller named Hassan explained to me in a crowded Kabul market, “Women love the new, modern style of the Chinese burqas.”

Since China’s entrance into the burqa market, Ali Ahmad speculates that 300 families have lost their jobs. “The Chinese have special machines that produce the entire burqa in a few minutes,” said Ali Ahmad, “We can’t compete with that.” The sewing machines his family uses are all hand-operated, although they’re cheap to buy at $100 dollars per machine. The Chinese sewing machines cost $4000. “No one can afford to buy that sort of machine in Afghanistan,” said Ali Ahmad. “Soon all our burqas will be made in China,” he says.

[Zhang Fei]

To late,they got the most people..And they work for food..

If only. A lot of manufacturers are reporting cost pressures due to high Chinese wages. They are now looking at Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Pakistan. Nike just moved its shoe factories back to Indonesia. (This is a round trip move, since it had earlier moved its factories from Indonesia to China).

[Tijeras_Slim]

They’re everywhere!

[JACKRUSSELL]

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