Nantong Home Textile City. [Photo by Bei Duomin]

Hailed as "the hometown of textiles" and "the capital of home textiles", Tongzhou district in Nantong boasts a complete industrial ecosystem for home textiles.

With annual market transactions exceeding 100 billion yuan ($14.80 billion), the home textile industry has become a specialty sector for the district, serving as a pillar of regional economic growth, driving local employment, and increasing household incomes.

Tongzhou has built comprehensive foreign trade sales channels for the home textile sector. A series of industrial platforms have been established to help local firms expand globally. These include the 1688 Nantong Home Textile Selection Center, the Xianyifang Cross-Border E-Commerce Park, and the Yuanchuan (Nantong) China-Africa Home Textile Production Capacity Model Park.

Meanwhile, new business models such as live-streaming marketing and cross-border e-commerce are booming. More than 4,000 live-streaming enterprises have set up operations in the Nantong Home Textile Industrial Belt, selling goods around the world.

As a labor-intensive sector, the home textile industry has attracted a large number of local workers and rural surplus labor. From production line workers and salespeople to deliverers and e-commerce live-streamers, numerous residents have found jobs and increased their incomes.

The industry's growth has also spurred the coordinated development of supporting sectors such as packaging, logistics, catering, and accommodation, igniting a wave of rural entrepreneurship. Many local entrepreneurs have grown from small vendors into industry leaders, boosting rural vitalization.