Fierce competition is prompting the nation's shoe-making industries to shift their focus from eastern and southern coastal areas to the western China in a bid to seek resources and cut labor costs.

"It is an inevitable trend for the shoe industry to move from advanced areas to developing provinces and regions," said Chen Shineng, chairman of the China Light Industry Association, during a recent visit to the Western China Shoe Industrial Park in Bishan, in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.

The industry has witnessed dramatic progress in the last 20 years in China. Various kinds of shoes produced in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces are big sellers in China and have won large market shares overseas.

But competition has increased during the sector's development. To sharpen competitiveness through reduced costs and material, and cheaper labor, companies are looking west.

"The co-operation between the east and west is a common desire shared by enterprises from both regions and the moving is expected to be completed in three to five years," Chen said.

The development of the Western China Shoe Industrial Park is an important step by the local government and shoe producers to turn Chongqing into a shoe industrial center in western China, said a representative of Aokang Group Co Ltd, the park's developer.

Covering 173 hectares, the park will cost 1 billion yuan (US$120 million) and is expected to be completed in 2006.

The first-phase of the project, which covers 62 hectares, will include an industrial center to produce exports, and a shoe and shoe material marketing office.

Domestic shoe makers have showed great interest in the new park.

Over 200 enterprises from Wenzhou, a city well-known within the industry, in Zhejiang Province and Chengdu in Sichuan Province have won bids to setup outlets in the park.

About 500 outlets have been sold, according to a park spokesman.

Over 20 large shoe and material processing enterprises, including Wenzhou Great Wall Shoe Co, Hangzhou Xinghua Leather Co Ltd and Chongqing Yuhua Shoe and Materials Co, have began constructing new factories in the park.

The park's administration committee is busy creating a land-use blueprint for the second phase of the project.

The whole park is expected to become home of 100 shoe-making enterprises with a combined annual production capacity of 100 million pairs of shoes, according to the administration.

(China Daily June 7, 2004)