China silk has a long history. So far, the earliest archaeological discoveries about silk fabrics come from Qianshanyang in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province and Qingtai Village in Xingyang, Henan Province, with a history of more than 5,000 years.

Although the archaeological discovery of silk fabrics in Shang Dynasty is limited, jacquard silk fabrics have appeared, which shows that the weaving technology at that time has reached a considerable level.

During the period of 1958, the Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Management Association and the Zhejiang Provincial Museum conducted two excavations on the Neolithic site on the east bank of Qianshanyang, Huzhou, north of Hangzhou. Silk thread, silk slice and ribbon were unearthed on the fourth floor of No.22 Tankeng. After identification, the cross section of silk fiber is triangular, belonging to silkworm of Bombycidae.

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The government-run weaving industry in Ming Dynasty was large in scale. In addition to setting up central dyeing and weaving institutions in Nanjing and Beijing, local dyeing and weaving bureaus have been set up in Suzhou, Hangzhou and more than 20 places across the country to supply the cloth needed by the imperial court and government every year.

There are two modes of production: "local weaving" and "foreign leading weaving". The local weaving is a shift corvee system, and the leading weaving is the folk machine repair shop. The personal attachment of craftsmen is looser than that of Yuan Dynasty.

The silk industry suffered heavy losses in the war in the early Qing Dynasty. Since the Kangxi Dynasty, silk production has developed rapidly due to the stability of the world and the encouragement measures taken by the imperial court. In the Qing Dynasty, the silk industry was further concentrated in the area around Taihu Lake and Pearl River Delta, especially in the area south of the Yangtze River, and became the center of the scale and level of the national silk industry.

People's Network-Overview of China Silk History