ZHEJIANG, East China — The week right before China’s biggest shopping festival is usually utter chaos for the country’s garment factories. Workers sew around the clock, hoping to meet demand from shoppers during e-commerce giant Alibaba’s annual Singles’ Day.

But this year, a relaxed atmosphere set over Banzuo Garment Manufacturing Inc., an inconspicuous 2-year-old clothing factory on the outskirts of Hangzhou, the city Alibaba calls home. Workers in rows methodically cut and sewed pieces of fabric, and then passed them down the line while listening to music on their headphones.

“We used to say: ‘The rising wind forebodes the coming storm,’” said Wu Jianfeng, Banzuo’s stylish 30-year-old manager, quoting a Chinese poem. For the previous two Singles’ Days, he’s had to run up and down the stairs, juggling calls from customers on his six phones, sometimes simultaneously. “But now, everything is taken care of,” said Wu, sipping tea in his office armchair ahead of this most recent Singles’ Day on Nov. 11.

It’s like building a virtual factory. I can see everything happening in the factory in an app. - Wu Jianfeng, Banzuo factory manager

The secret behind this year’s calm: the 20 cameras installed in June that constantly film Banzuo’s 600-square-meter manufacturing floor. As the factory workers make clothes, the devices capture their movements and send the footage to a server placed in the factory by Alibaba. The server then uses gesture recognition technology to convert the workers’ movements into data that calculates the amount of clothing items made and sends the data to Alibaba Cloud. On Alibaba’s app DingTalk, Wu and his customers get real-time updates on the status of the orders and their estimated completion date. Wu doesn’t have to plan out his production schedule based on his own estimations: The app provides him with the best production plan based on its algorithms, and both Wu and his customers get push notifications if anything is delayed. “It’s like building a virtual factory,” said Wu, “I can see everything happening in the factory in an app.”

Banzuo is among 20 garment factories that have already rolled out Alibaba’s ambitious “New Manufacturing” plan, which aims to revolutionize the country’s traditional manufacturing sector alongside the government’s “Made in China 2025” initiative. But while the plan helps manufacturers, vendors, and shoppers alike, some experts warn that it may end up putting too much control in the hands of China’s tech giants.

Wu Jianfeng, the 30-year-old manager of Banzuo Garment Manufacturing Inc., checks on the production status of one of his orders in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Nov. 5, 2018. Xue Yujie/Sixth Tone

Alibaba’s plan comes at a time of painful restructuring in the clothing manufacturing industry. Although China is still the world’s biggest clothing exporter, it’s losing its competitive edge to lower-cost workforces like those in India and Vietnam. In a bid to reclaim lost ground, China’s manufacturers are looking to get ahead in other ways, including increasing their quality and efficiency with the help of the country’s tech giants. Eventually, Tao Factory, the supply chain management subsidiary of Alibaba, plans to partner up with Alibaba Cloud to upgrade 200 traditional garment factories using the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence by the end of 2018. Their hope is to give shoppers and garment retailers exactly what they want, when they want it — and Tao Factory general manager Yuan Wei said that increasing efficiency might have the added benefit of helping traditional factories survive and changing the stigma attached to “Made in China” labels.