In 2025, China imported over 1 million tons of cotton, with Brazilian and Australian cotton together accounting for more than 70%; over the same period, raw cotton exports were only 5,400 tons, yet pure cotton yarn exports reached 332,200 tons, up 9.49% year-on-year. Xinjiang's total cotton output last year was 6.165 million tons, accounting for 92.8% of the national total, ranking first nationwide in both total output and yield per unit for 32 consecutive years. The gap between "importing raw materials and exporting finished products" is precisely a microcosm of the division of labor in China's textile industry.

Key Points

  • In 2025, China's cotton imports exceeded 1 million tons, with Brazilian and Australian cotton accounting for over 70%.
  • In 2025, pure cotton yarn exports reached 332,200 tons, up 9.49% year-on-year, with Pakistan leading at 109,000 tons, accounting for 32.81%.
  • In 2025, raw cotton exports were only 5,400 tons, while Xinjiang's total cotton output was 6.165 million tons, accounting for 92.8% of the national total.

What Is Imported Is Raw Material; What Is Exported Is Processing Capacity

China's cotton yield per unit is not low—in 2024, the national yield per unit area reached 148.6 kg/mu. But academic research shows that domestic cotton planting costs are relatively high, and raw cotton quality sits at an upper-middle level worldwide, clearly below that of the United States and Australia, with a gap of about 58.5% in high-quality raw cotton. This means the textile industry relies not on "growing more" but on "weaving better."

China's textile competitiveness is concentrated in the midstream and downstream: in 2024, yarn and fabric exports exceeded $83 billion, with both yarn and fabric growing year-on-year, and in the first half of 2025 they reached nearly $43 billion. WTO data shows that China's share of world apparel exports fell from nearly 40% in 2014 to about 30% in 2024, but its share of textile exports continued to climb to a historic high of 43.3%—the industry's center of gravity is shifting from garment manufacturing to upstream spinning and weaving, while exports of textile intermediate products also grew 1.8% year-on-year for the full year. In 2024, China's textile and apparel exports remained above $300 billion for the sixth consecutive year.

Imported cotton plays the role of a "regulator" here: supplementing volume when supply is insufficient, supplementing categories when types do not match, and suppressing costs when prices are inverted.

Sliding-Duty Quota: Imported Cotton Must Be Processed and Re-Exported

The National Development and Reform Commission issues sliding-duty processing trade quotas each year, with a total of 300,000 tons in 2024. Enterprises apply first-come, first-served with contracts, and the quota can substantially reduce tariffs on imported foreign cotton.

The quota comes with hard constraints: the imported cotton can only be used by the enterprise that obtained the quota and may not be resold. Enterprises must spin the cotton into yarn, weave it into fabric, and make it into clothing before exporting; if they abandon it midway or secretly resell it, they may at best lose the quota and at worst be barred from applying again for two years. This arrangement institutionally locks in the model of "bring it in for processing, then send it out to earn the margin," leaving profit space for spinning enterprises and preserving employment.

The Export Star Is Not Raw Cotton, but Industrial Products Woven from Xinjiang Cotton

"Xinjiang cotton exports" are often misread as shiploads of raw cotton being sent abroad. The fact is that the vast majority of Xinjiang cotton is spun into yarn and woven into fabric domestically, then made into clothing and home textiles such as bed sheets and towels, and sold globally in the form of industrial products. In 2024, China exported 6.424 billion meters of cotton fabric, with net exports of 2.276 billion meters.

Local cotton textile enterprises in Xinjiang are also transforming. Tan Yongjun, founder of the brand "Tan Mianhua," said that in recent years external sanctions caused overseas orders to plunge and operations to become difficult, so the company turned to developing the domestic market and building e-commerce channels; in the first half of 2025, sales approached 30 million yuan, with a full-year target of 60 million to 70 million yuan. The Aksu region has already connected the entire industrial chain from planting, spinning, weaving, and dyeing to garment making; one enterprise moved from Nantong, Jiangsu, into the Aksu Textile Industrial City, attracted precisely by the dual proximity of a high-quality raw material source and the Central Asian market.

Imports fill the gap, exports sell finished products—"one in, one out" is the division-of-labor choice after doing the economic math.

Source: Importing 2 Million Tons a Year, Yet Xinjiang Cotton Is Exported in Large Quantities! This Move Has Been Misunderstood by Many · Originally published on 2026-09-29