In 1890, China imported the first sewing machine from the United States.
In 1905, Shanghai first began to manufacture sewing machine parts and established some small workshops for parts production.
In 1928, the first 44-13 industrial sewing machine was produced by Shanghai Xiechang Sewing Machine Factory. In the same year, Shanghai Shengmei Sewing Machine Factory also produced the first sewing machine for home use.
Before 1949, the production of sewing machines in old China was very low, with an annual output of less than 4,000 units, and the market for sewing equipment at that time was mainly monopolized by the American Shengjia Company.
In 1949, after the founding of New China, the sewing machinery industry was fully developed, and the industry went through the stage of reorganization, transformation, public-private partnership, merger and cooperation, and a reasonable division of labor, forming a number of backbone enterprises: such as Shanghai's Che, Chang, Huigong, Flying Man, Butterfly and Tianjin Sewing Machine Factory and Guangzhou's South China Sewing Machine Factory and other sewing machine manufacturers, which mainly produced ordinary household sewing machines and low-grade industrial sewing machines. They mainly produced general household sewing machines and low-grade industrial sewing machines.
The end of the 1950s, the light industry for domestic sewing machines, generalization, standardization, unified design drawings, improve the compatibility of parts and components, so that the sewing machine manufacturers continue to increase, and according to the needs of the development of sunflower fan, medical and surgical, badminton, bicycle tires and cordura splicing and other special-purpose sewing machines. According to statistics.
As of 1980 the country *** there are 56 sewing machine manufacturers, distributed in 22 provinces and cities. By 1982, China's production of sewing machines reached 12.86 million units, ranking first in the world.
By the mid-1980s, with the continuous adjustment of the market and consumer structure, the product structure of sewing equipment in the medium and low-speed industrial sewing machines on the basis of high-speed, serialization direction, electronic, computer technology has also been widely used in sewing machines. At the same time, China has also completed the establishment of the parts and components supporting system, and constructed a huge sewing machine sales network. Some of the sewing machine enterprises digested and absorbed the advanced technology after introducing it from abroad.
In the early 1990s, famous international enterprises entered China one after another and set up joint ventures and wholly-owned enterprises in China.
In the late 1990s, private enterprises began to rise, and the great adjustment of industrial structure promoted the great development of the industry, which generally formed six major production areas and bases, including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Tianjin and Guangzhou.