China Producing “Fine Range Of Textiles”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 14

China Producing “Fine Range Of Textiles”

China was producing a very fine range of both men’s and women’s worsted suitings and all grades of knitting wools and knit-wear, said Mr K. Turner, of Auckland, in Christchurch yesterday. Mr Turner, a New Zealand wholesale merchant, has made two recent trips to China and plans to make another in July. “The main attraction of Chinese goods is the cost price, which is much less than for Japanese or English goods,” he said. “The quality of Chinese goods compares favourably with those of Japan or England.”

Mr Turner said that his company was bringing in to New Zealand a certain amount of goods from China, including towels, tea-towels, sheets, bed-sheets, light lines and some women’s and men’s light-weight worsted suiting. In both Shanghai and Peking, said Mr Turner, he had viewed a great quantity of Chinese products. “They are producing everything in the textile range to the best of my knowledge,” he said. “About half the articles are very nearly prohibited imports to people in this country We can’t import knitting wools or made up knit-wear, except in the form of token licences. “And you can’t give a country like China token orders because she is not interested.” Mr Turner said there was a certain amount of interest in New Zealand' in Chinese worsteds. But they were imported on a very strictly controlled licence.

“Most people wanting worsted suiting in this country prefer to buy it from England, because the quantity they can import anyway is so small that they have an assured market for that kind of goods,” he said. Mr Turner said that duties on goods from Communist China were the same as those on goods from Japan 'or other foreign countries without Commonwealth preference.

“China exports goods here on a most-favoured-nation basis.” he said.