The Weavers' Boom

Hong Kong's textile industry spun a tale of woe when the U.S. and other nations imposed embargoes on its low-cost cotton goods a few years ago. With acrimony and self-pity, it predicted dwindling sales, growing unemployment and financial disaster for the industry, which employs 41% of Hong Kong's work force and manufactures 53% of its exports. Nothing of the sort has happened: Hong Kong has enjoyed boom rather than bankruptcy.

Meeting the challenge by imposing voluntary production controls, skillfully negotiating export quotas with other countries and increasing the variety and quality, the textile industry increased its exports 16.8% to a record $350 million last year, expects at least a 6% gain this year. There is actually a shortage of 14,000 textile workers.

The firm that has contributed most to the prosperity of Hong Kong's textile industry, and profited most from it, is South Sea Textile Manufacturing, the colony's biggest spinner and weaver and the creation of a sprightly textileman named P.Y. (for Ping Yuan) Tang. Last week Tang, 65, was negotiating with Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries and another Hong Kong spinner to build Hong Kong's first dyeing and finishing plant for processing blends of cotton and synthetic fibers. Tang expects to increase his production 15% this year, and his 2,000 employees work three shifts round the clock in his 18-acre, air-conditioned plant.

Tang helped Hong Kong by crusading for higher quality and a broader outlook than "one-shot" sales, helped set up permanent "ambassadors" of the industry in Brussels and New York and promoted Hong Kong products on his own wide travels. His new finishing plant reflects his belief that Hong Kong's textile industry must upgrade itself and diversify: instead of producing only basic fabrics, he insists, it must embrace a wide variety of quality and costlier finished goods. Tang's efforts have made him a millionaire many times over, but he is not awed by money. When he left China in 1948 to escape the Reds, he and his family left behind a fortune estimated at $50 million.

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