Yangtze businesses getting creative

For privately owned enterprises, turnover also fell 10.4 percent from April and decreased 7.5 percent compared with the previous year, fair data showed.

"All the orders for this year I've signed are smaller and for shorter terms from nearly the same amount of clients compared with the previous year, which indicates the overseas market hasn't recovered yet," said Yang Xiaolong, chairman of Zhejiang Gete Clothes Co Ltd in Wenzhou, who had just returned from the Canton Fair.

He added that foreign clients breached contracts to avoid risk when fluctuations in raw material prices and exchange rates got too large from time to time.

To counteract a nearly 50 percent drop in orders compared with two years ago, Yang managed to find five new clients in Russia, South America and the Middle East to make up the loss through the whole year to maintain business operations.

"The export price kept declining for European countries in the past year, but the demands from newly emerging countries, such as those in South America, climbed," Yang said.

Yang noted that his profit margin improved slightly, growing about 5 percent, mainly due to booming markets in developing countries, while the European market still hasn't recovered.

"The shrinking export orders and tougher trade requirements from overseas have been quite noticeable - the company received far fewer orders from overseas, while close to 10 percent of regular clients didn't put in any new orders this year," said Zhang Guanjin, general manager of Shaoxing Jinyong Textile Co Ltd in Zhejiang.

Increased labor and material expenses forced the company to reduce the number of employees from 150 in 2011 to about 60.

In another move, Zhang switched his focus from overseas to the domestic market, getting comparatively fewer orders but with slightly higher prices.

"From the worst downturn of the previous year to the slow recovery of the global economy, the moderate growth in new export orders probably will benefit us sooner or later," he said.