What Shein’s supply chain says about the future of Chinese manufacturing

AS THE midday sun blazed down on Panyu, a suburb in the southern city of Guangzhou, silence took hold of what an hour earlier had been the sounds of trucks shuffling goods on roads still under construction and whirring sewing machines pumping out women’s clothes.

The garment-making district – the hub of which is nicknamed “Shein village” for the central role it plays in making clothes sold on the fast-fashion platform – was resting. The workers had vanished underneath their stations before reappearing after a ritual lunchtime nap common across Chinese workplaces from factory floors to office towers.

The Chinese-founded startup Shein, valued at US$66 billion in its latest funding round, hopes to go public in London in the coming months, bringing a much-needed boost to the listing-starved UK exchange. Its explosive entry to the fashion world at the turn of the decade, undercutting European rivals Zara and H&M with its seeming impossibly cheap prices – from US$5 dresses to US$2 T-shirts – has raised questions about the wages of the workers producing the wares.