Zhejiang
Secondary hubShaoxing
Shaoxing, in northern Zhejiang between Hangzhou and Ningbo, is China's largest textile manufacturing centre by output and the most important place in the world to buy fabric. Its Keqiao district holds China Textile City — the largest textile wholesale market anywhere, with more than 70,000 booths — and the townships around it are dense with weaving mills, dyeing and printing houses and garment factories, some 30,000 in all.
The city dominates global synthetic fabric production: polyester and nylon wovens and knits, printed textiles, linings, interlinings and performance fabrics. The cluster logic is straightforward. The full chain from yarn and weaving through dyeing, printing and finishing was built out in one place, so fabric development that would take weeks of coordination elsewhere happens across the street. That is why fast-fashion brands and their suppliers lean on Keqiao.
Buyers arrive in two modes. Apparel brands and garment factories source fabric here even when cutting and sewing happen elsewhere in China or overseas; others buy finished goods directly, with curtains and drapes a particular strength alongside other made-up home textiles. Hangzhou's Xiaoshan airport is forty-five minutes away and Ningbo's container port an hour and a half, with Shanghai two and a half hours out. If your product starts with fabric, this is usually where its supply chain actually begins.
Factory base
30,000+ textile-related factories
Nearest port
Ningbo (1.5 hours), Shanghai (2.5 hours)
Airport
Hangzhou Xiaoshan (45 min), Shanghai Pudong (3 hours)
Logistics advantage
Largest textile market globally — fabric variety unmatched anywhere
Best for
Apparel brands and product developers who need fabric variety above all — Keqiao holds more fabric SKUs in one place than anywhere else in the world. Strong for synthetic fabrics at scale, printed textiles, performance and lining fabrics, and for finished curtains and drapes. Well suited to buyers who want to control fabric selection separately from garment making, and to anyone developing a textile-based product who needs to compare many constructions and prices quickly. Volume buyers get real leverage here; smaller buyers can still work from stock fabrics.
Manufacturing specialisations
- Synthetic fabrics (polyester, nylon)
- Printed textiles
- Curtains and drapes
- Apparel manufacturing
- Home textiles (some)
- Performance fabrics
- Lining and interlining
Notable markets & industrial clusters
China Textile City (Keqiao)
World's largest textile wholesale market — 70,000+ booths
Shaoxing Light Textile Industrial Park
Manufacturing concentration
Watch-outs
The booth you buy from is rarely the mill that wove the fabric, so traceability takes work. Quality varies enormously within a single fabric type — test bulk production against sealed approved samples every time. Custom dyeing and printing runs 30-50 days, which catches out buyers used to stock timelines, and dye-lot colour consistency and fibre composition claims both need third-party verification.
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