After more than three decades of rapid, extensive growth, China's footwear industry has accumulated substantial experience and entered a period of industrial transformation by 2012. For instance, the export-oriented footwear sector faced significant downward pressure due to shrinking international demand and increasing trade protection measures—such as anti-dumping actions—from key importing countries. While large-scale enterprises continued to thrive, many small shoe manufacturers were forced to shut down.

Several years earlier, rising labor costs, increasing raw material prices, and exchange rate fluctuations had already prompted numerous Chinese footwear companies to relocate their production bases to Southeast Asia. The full implementation of the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area further accelerated the growth of footwear industries in countries like Vietnam, India, and Pakistan, intensifying competitive pressure on China’s domestic shoe manufacturing sector. From January to November 2010 alone, Vietnam’s athletic footwear output grew by 20.2% year-on-year, while its above-scale leather shoe enterprises saw output increase by 23.4%, posing a significant potential threat to China’s footwear industry.

Nevertheless, China’s footwear enterprises remain highly competitive. Over the past two decades, leveraging favorable investment conditions and abundant labor resources, China has built a comprehensive upstream and downstream industrial chain. It has developed specialized footwear manufacturing clusters for various shoe types, established mature markets for finished shoes and shoe materials, and created dedicated R&D and information centers for the footwear industry.

Although China’s footwear sector currently faces challenges—including domestic policy adjustments, rising labor costs, and competition from countries like India, Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia in the low- to mid-end market, as well as competition from Italy, Spain, and Portugal in the high-end segment—its overall competitive advantages in manufacturing scale, supply chain integration, and industrial ecosystem remain unmatched by other nations.