Every year, Chinese consumers discard 26 million tons of used clothing. Much of it goes into landfills, some is incinerated and others are finding their way into developing markets like Africa, where shirts emblazoned with Chinese characters are apparently becoming more fashionable.

Guangzhou-based apparel trader Sun Weidong (孙卫东) is representative of a new generation of China-Africa merchants who are pioneering this new market to package up old, discarded clothes in China and ship them to be re-sold across Africa.