Chinese manufacturers pumped out 3.4 billion garments in January and February of this year, an increase of 38.4 percent over the same period a year earlier, according to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Over these two months, the combined operating revenue for 12,438 major garment firms surveyed by the ministry equalled 179.2 billion yuan ($27.4 billion), rising 21.4 percent year-on-year.

China’s online retail sales of clothing, meanwhile, rose 44.3 percent year-on-year in the first two months, and the country’s garment exports were up 50 percent on the year to $24 billion.

Though this data is a promising sign for China’s garment industry’s recovery, last year’s data for this period was particularly poor as Chinese New Year and the widespread outbreak of Covid-19 in China coalesced in the second half of January 2020. China’s garment manufacturing sector has yet to return to pre-pandemic output or revenue.