This Day, That Year

Item from Aug 19, 1990, in China Daily: City dwellers are no longer buying material and making their own clothes, but are sporting fashionable ready-made garments.

The rate of wearing ready-made clothes is considered to be an important factor in judging the standard of social, economic and cultural development of a nation. By early 1980s, that rate in developed countries had already reached 90 percent. In China it is about 20 percent.

Over the past few decades, China's exports of textiles and clothes have witnessed exponential growth.