China raising cotton imports not a result of US ban

China has been importing cotton in bulk from countries including the US, India, and Brazil in recent months amid a global price rally which sent the crop’s price to a decade-high.

But the jump in imports has mainly been driven by either the desire of Chinese agencies to stockpile goods for profit or to fulfill commercial requirements on the cotton’s texture, rather than what some Western media have reported as due to foreign companies’ ban on the use of Xinjiang cotton, which they say have “forced” Chinese textile makers to import cotton and sell it back to foreign markets.

The cotton in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, or the main cotton producing region in China, entered a large-scale centralized harvesting period in early October, with orders swarming in and cotton being collected at a record offering, industry insiders said. Some upstream companies are also taking a “wait-and-see” attitude amid price hikes.

“Chinese downstream industries have been desperately securing cotton from everywhere, but the biggest issue is that global cotton dealers are not currently willing to sell, anticipating a further price hike. Logistical barriers are another problem,” a manager of a cotton import agency based in North China’s Tianjin Municipality surnamed Chen said.

A Wall Street Journal report attributed the uptick in sales to a ban imposed by the former Trump administration on Xinjiang cotton over alleged “force labor” in the region, claiming that Chinese clothing firms are importing a lot more cotton to fill the void in Xinjiang cotton before reshipping abroad, so that their overseas orders are not affected by the ban.

But industry insiders noted that political factors only play a marginal role, and the rise in imports is a business choice over product texture and quality.

“Due to climate-related factors, seeds and techniques, cotton from Xinjiang contains more foreign fibers than that of the US and Brazil. This means for certain knitting yarn used for bleaching purposes, Chinese factories have to use cotton from the other two production areas,” Chen explained.