The small township of Yangxunqiao in Shaoxing County, Zhejiang Province, is the country's leading textile manufacturing center, and boasts five privately owned listed companies.

　　Around the county, there are more textile firms waiting to be listed on Shanghai's A-share or Hong Kong stock market.

　　That's not strange as the Shaoxing government is working to build the county into an international textile trade and manufacturing center in the next few years.

　　"At present, the textile industry contributes 85 percent of the county's gross domestic product," said Xu Jiping, Party secretary of 1,200-square-kilometer Shaoxing County. "Almost every family here is involved in textiles."

　　Shaoxing's strengths in private-sector textiles were developed with China Textile City, the country's biggest textile market, which is located in Keqiao township.

　　The three-story, 400,000-square-meter market with 12,000 booths has been a magnet for overseas buyers since it opened in 1988. About 1,000 overseas sales representatives live near the market all year round.

　　Last year, 26.2 billion yuan (US.2 billion) worth of goods were sold through the market.

　　At first, companies mostly trade goods within the country. Only in the last three years have the firms started to seek export deals.

　　Last year, Shaoxing exported US billion worth of textile products around the world, squeezing out Japanese and South Korean rivals on some goods.

　　"Currently, most of the textile products here are low-end goods. It's urgent for us to upgrade our manu-facturing facilities and goods quality to meet the standards of an international textile manufacturing and trading center," Xu said.

　　Xu said the work is well under way, as many foreign rivals chose to form joint venture with local com-panies to take advantage of the low costs.