On the eve of the 2025 Two Sessions, China‘s top leadership held a Private Enterprise Symposium in Beijing earlier this month, with participating enterprises covering key fields such as intelligent manufacturing, digital technology and green energy.
Notably, the list of attending business leaders featured Alibaba, DeepSeek and Hengli Group — representing the front-runners in e-commerce, artificial intelligence and textile manufacturing, respectively. For the fashion industry, this lineup underscored China’s ambition to forge a closed-loop system integrating consumer data, technological innovation and manufacturing upgrades, with the aim to reshape the industry’s ecosystem.
The symposium marked one of the highest-profile private sector meetings in recent years, with the last comparable event dating back to November 2018. Against the backdrop of tariff pressures and sluggish private sector activity, its timing signaled strong government support for private enterprise.
Economists suggest that today’s domestic demand challenges are even more pronounced than in 2018, with China’s economic model transitioning from a land finance-driven approach to a “New Quality Productivity” paradigm. In the short term, this high-level dialogue is expected to bolster private sector investment confidence and enhance the employment-income-consumption cycle.
Market analysts also highlight the technological edge of the attending companies, indicating that global investors may shift their focus on Chinese assets from mere “undervalued recovery” to “technological competitiveness.”
Moreover, with the upcoming Two Sessions, there is growing anticipation for further policy support for consumer spending, AI, advanced manufacturing and clean energy — all of which could significantly boost China’s fashion industry, particularly in AI-driven applications.
As spring unfolds, the fashion industry’s increasing use of AI could help usher in a new era of intelligent manufacturing.
Defining AI in Fashion: A New Era of Application
At the end of 2024, amid economic headwinds, China’s DeepSeek AI model made waves — going viral within a day of its release, breaking into mainstream discussions within three days, sending shock waves through global tech stocks within six days, and eventually topping the U.S. Apple app store charts. The phenomenon marked the arrival of China’s DeepSeek Moment, turning the AI model into a household name across industries — from venture capital to TMT, from boardrooms to street corners.
DeepSeek Daily Active Users (Incomplete Statistics)
During the Private Enterprise Symposium, DeepSeek’s parent company, DeepSeek AI, was the only firm mentioned multiple times — a testament to its pivotal role in AI-driven transformation across knowledge services, digital marketing, industrial manufacturing, film production and consumer electronics supply chains.
For the fashion industry, generative AI is set to accelerate fabric simulation, dynamic rendering, and personalized design, potentially cutting the traditional three-month clothing development cycle down to just 72 hours. AI design tools are breaking traditional limitations, enabling users to generate high-precision 3D fashion models via voice commands, refine designs in real-time with AR fittings, and pioneer a zero-inventory model — lowering entry barriers for small brands while scaling personalized customization.
Meanwhile, Alibaba’s Tmall AI-powered virtual fitting room, which generates personalized styling recommendations based on user body shape and style preferences, has boosted conversion rates by 18 percent. Unlike Snapchat’s AR shopping plugin, China’s platforms emphasize ecosystem synergy with livestream e-commerce, driving a more immersive and interactive shopping experience.
Smart Manufacturing and Sustainability
Sustainability remains a dominant theme in global markets, including in China. The country’s “3060” decarbonization targets — peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 — underscore its commitment to a green economic transformation. With the rapid adoption of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles, China is aiming to align with global sustainability standards.
AI-driven smart manufacturing could help to further sustainable fashion. One of the leading players in textile and fiber production, Hengli Group, was among the top attendees at the symposium. The company reported annual revenue of 817.7 billion renminbi, surpassing Huawei and ranking 81st on the Fortune Global 500 list.
With its AI-powered intelligent manufacturing platform, Hengli has successfully reduced carbon emissions from textile production by 30 percent. In 2024, Jiangsu province encouraged enterprises to collaborate with universities such as Nanjing University and Nanjing University of Science and Technology, using big data and AI models to develop general AI solutions for industrial applications. Textile giants Hengli Group and Shenghong Holding Group were among the key players in this initiative.
In fact, as a leading textile manufacturing enterprise, Hengli Group has achieved results in optimizing production processes through AI algorithms, improving product quality, and exploring intelligent and flexible production models. In Hengli’s workshops, robotic arms operate flexibly, automated transport robots function in an orderly manner, and smart equipment such as automatic doffing, visual inspection, automated packaging, and stereoscopic warehouses enhance efficiency and accuracy. The intelligent external inspection system can detect and alert defects in real time, while products are fully traceable with real-time quality monitoring throughout the production process.
At the same time, from production to warehousing, a complete information chain is established, ensuring traceability for each product’s quality. While many European enterprises focus more on production automation, Chinese firms aim to implement “data + algorithms” to connect the entire process from design to factory in an end-to-end manner.
But while China’s AI applications in fashion have made progress, there remains a gap with global leaders in areas such as high-end fabric research and development 3D fashion design software, and AI-driven trend forecasting. Additionally, challenges like data standardization and fragmented industry data silos could hinder AI’s full potential in the Chinese fashion sector.
That said, 2025 could be a turning point for China’s fashion AI revolution. Behind the Private Enterprise Symposium, a new chapter in China’s fashion industry is being written that could reshape the country’s supply chain.
Editor’s note: China Insight is a monthly column from WWD’s sister publication WWD China looking at developments in that key market.
