This article examines the competitiveness of Cambodia's garment export industry, on which the country's recent and successful economic development has depended to an unusually heavy extent. Using primary interviews and drawing on a wide range of secondary sources, it documents how Cambodia was drawn into garment global value chains, based almost entirely on inward investment. Despite its expansion in the face of strong Chinese competition, since the end of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing in December 2004, the industry remains vulnerable as a result of deficient infrastructure, labour unrest, official corruption and the absence of an adequate domestic textile industry, all of which serve to diminish its attractiveness to global buyers.Cet article a pour but d 0 examiner la compe´titivite´de l 0 industrie d 0 exportation du veˆtement au Cambodge, dont le de´veloppement e´conomique re´cent du pays a e´te´particulie`rement de´pendent. À partir d 0 entretiens primaires ainsi que diverses sources secondaires, nous montrons comment le Cambodge s 0 est inse´re´dans les chaıˆnes de valeur internationales de la confection en s 0 appuyant presque entie`rement sur des investissements internes. Malgre´une croissance e´conomique qui en de´pit de la forte concurrence chinoise se poursuit depuis la fin de l 0 Accord sur les Textiles et les Veˆtements, en de´cembre 2004, l 0 industrie reste vulne´rable en raison d 0 infrastructures de´ficientes, de conditions ouvrie`res instables, de la corruption ainsi que de la faiblesse de l 0 industrie domestique du textile, qui sont tous des facteurs qui nuisent a`son attractivite´aupre`s des investisseurs internationaux.
Although China has diversified into sophisticated, higher value‐added exports, it is still a formidable competitor in global markets for basic labour‐intensive products. It is the world's largest exporting country of textiles and garments, the archetypical driver of industrial growth both in developed countries in the past and in most newly industrializing countries more recently. When the export restrictions under the Multi‐Fibre Arrangement (MFA) ended at the start of 2005, it was predicted that China would greatly increase its market shares at the expense of most competitors, except perhaps India. Vietnam has proved to be an effective competitor in the garment industry in markets where China is dominant. In this article, we investigate how key export‐oriented garment suppliers of Vietnam have been coping with competitive challenges in the post MFA era at a time when global buyers have been reorganizing their international production networks. We emphasize the influence of different global value chains on upgrading since Vietnamese suppliers switched to the US market after the implementation of the US Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001. We note the uneven performance of Vietnamese garment suppliers, with some lagging behind others in upgrading and competitiveness, and their different responses to Vietnam's growing labour shortages. We base the article mainly on interviews conducted over the 2001–2008 period with garment companies and global buyers in Vietnam, Hong Kong and China.
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