Hand-me-down to Africa (2)

Behind the competition

This export industry - selling secondhand clothes to Africa - has existed in China for 20 years, and is primarily based in coastal areas such as Guangdong Province. However, it still lags well behind similar industries in the US, Japan, India and the UK, who have been the biggest exporters for the past 40 years, according to a report in China Business News (CBN).

"China's clothes are welcome in Africa because they are cheaper and China enjoys a positive reputation there," said Fang Xiaodong, the founder of jiuyf.com, a Hangzhou-based online transaction website which has around 3,000 members who export clothes to Africa from China.

Small companies or individuals buy old clothes door-to-door, usually paying something between 0.2 yuan ($0.03) to 0.4 yuan per kilogram. In some developed areas, good secondhand clothes are sold at 2 to 20 yuan per piece, according to Fang.

After roughly classifying the clothes according to seasons and styles, collectors sell them to larger collection companies at a price ranging between 300 yuan per ton to 3,000 yuan per ton according to different qualities and regions, Fang said, adding that the clothes in wealthy areas are more expensive than clothes from poor areas.

These companies further sort the clothes to meet the needs of African clients, and sell them from between 6,000 to 20,000 yuan per ton, he said.

"Though the price gap sounds big, the profits have been limited in recent years," Fang told the Global Times. "Clothes that are dirty or ruined have to be sent to garbage processing plants and the rest cost money to store.

Both Fang and Chen admitted that in many cases clothes don't go through much treatment before being sent overseas, but they both believed there weren't problems with these clothes.

"The secondhand clothes should be disinfected through high temperature or irradiation," Pan Xiaochuang, a professor with the School of Public Health, Peking University, told the Global Times. "Otherwise, there are hidden threats related to spreading diseases."

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