Xinjiang ramps up cotton, textiles biz

Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is leveraging its strengths in cotton production, energy resources, strategic location, and supportive policies to restructure and upgrade its textile and apparel industry value chain.

Efforts are focused on boosting local cotton processing, extending industrial chains and integrating cotton textile with petrochemical sectors.

At a conference on industrial park supply chain development in Alaer city on Wednesday, Liang Yong, a national political adviser and director of Xinjiang's cotton industry development leading group office, noted that the region has built a complete industrial chain covering chemical fibers, spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, garments and industrial textiles.

He reported that Xinjiang ranks second nationally in cotton yarn output, fourth in viscose and fifth in cotton fabric, with notable progress in items like towels and socks.

Liang highlighted Xinjiang's rapid expansion of printing and dyeing capacity and breakthroughs in large-scale polyester production. Woven filament yarn fabric output surged from 1.39 million meters in 2020 to 1.41 billion meters in 2024, and reached 1.63 billion meters in the first 11 months of this year, a 19 percent year-on-year increase.

The total output value of Xinjiang's textile and apparel industry rose to 97.39 billion yuan ($13.9 billion) from January to November, marking a 19.6 percent increase. Export value through Xinjiang's ports reached 151.32 billion yuan in 2024, doubling from the 2020 figure.

From 2021 to 2024, the sector employed about 236,000 people, with 82.8 percent in southern Xinjiang. From January to September, more than 32,000 new jobs were created, 72 percent of which were in southern Xinjiang.

Liang outlined plans to raise the local cotton processing rate from 42 percent to 60 percent within five years, using around 4 million metric tons of cotton annually. He proposed closer collaboration with Central Asian countries to align standards and reduce trade barriers, while utilizing industrial parks to attract labor-intensive enterprises and expanding exports via China-Europe freight trains.

The conference, attended by some 500 officials, industry insiders and scholars, also discussed topics including green transformation, Xinjiang's chemical fiber and industrial textile development.

Yan Yan, vice-president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, emphasized the importance of supply chain restructuring for sustainable growth, citing Xinjiang's progress with industrial parks as the core of supply chain development.

Qi Xin, director of the institute for economic and trade cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative at Beijing-based Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, suggested adopting differentiated overseas strategies, enhancing research and development in high-performance fibers and digital printing, and establishing rapid response mechanisms to trade barriers.

Alaer, the host city of the conference, is a key textile hub with Xinjiang's largest and most integrated industry cluster. Chen Yufeng, the city's deputy Party secretary, pledged full-cycle services for enterprises and the development of a full-chain ecosystem centered around cotton spinning, viscose and polyester clusters.

One major enterprise, Xinjiang Yuxin New Materials Co, runs one of northwestern China's largest polyester raw material bases in Alaer. The company's executive deputy general manager Zhu Jianguo said the facility links petrochemical and textile industrial chains, creating 12,000 local jobs. All products are sold within the region.

He added that the company plans to continue investing in Xinjiang, expand polyester filament production in Alaer and move further upstream in the value chain.

The conference also marked the trial launch of Xinjiang Textile City, an integrated hub for fabric supply and processing, machinery and parts trading, product display, smart warehousing and logistics, and digital park management.