Editor's note: People's Daily's overseas edition recently published a set of data on clothing consumption, which, among other things, show that since the fourth quarter of 2017, the sale of different kinds of clothing has declined to varying degrees. The report also asked whether domestic consumers no longer like to buy clothes. 21st Century Business Herald comments:

The data showed 54.06 billion pieces of clothing were sold in China last year, 17.85 billion pieces fewer than the 71.91 billion pieces in 2017, which means an average reduction of 12 pieces of clothing per person.

Yet the per capita clothing expenditure in 2018 increased to 1,289 yuan ($201), up 4.1 percent year-on-year, 1.2 percentage points higher than the previous year's growth. Which means the increase in clothing prices may be responsible for the growth in people's total clothing consumption despite people buying fewer pieces of clothing. National Bureau of Statistics data show clothing accounted for 6.5 percent of people's total consumer spending in 2018, down 0.3 percentage points year-on-year.

One reason behind people's declining clothing consumption is the rising clothing prices.

Another reason why people are buying fewer pieces of clothing is possibly the diversified consumer demand and insufficient supply capacity, as many people have shifted their focus to trends. As such, they prefer to buy branded or customized products.

China's high-end clothing market is dominated by brands from such countries as France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea, while the middle-end market is full of brands from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

So Chinese mainland enterprises should build their own brands, streamline their production and reduce their costs to get a bigger share of the market. Only in this way can they gain home advantage in a clothing-making country with a population of more than 1.3 billion.