On 23 March, China Cotton Textile Association will host the industrial situation analysis meeting around “innovation and development” in Wuhan, Hubei, organizing the national upstream and downstream enterprises and related units to discuss cotton policy, export yarns, Xinjiang yarn, industrial innovation measures and ways and other hot topics to discuss the urgent situation and prominent contradictions facing the development of industry.

 

 

In the past two years, Li Daliang has planted more than 50 acres of cotton in Jiangxin village Tu County, but he started to planted wheat and corn since last year. He told the reporter that, the situation of cotton industry is not good with low benefit and costs lots of time and works. In Anhui province, many farmers have turned their way to plant other industrial crops, so the cotton planting area is reduced gradually.

 

 

The Youngor cotton spinning factory is one of the biggest employers in Aksu, an agricultural town on the edge of the Taklamakan desert in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Youngor, one of China's largest shirt makers, opened the plant in 2011 to be closer to the main cotton-growing region in the Xinjiang region. Soon it will be joined by others: China wants to create 1 million textile jobs in Xinjiang by 2023.

 

According to the regional government's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), Xinjiang will become a key hub for textile production. It will also extend the industry chain from cotton spinning to making garments. By 2020, Xinjiang is expected to produce about 500 million garments annually and create more than 600,000 jobs.

 

 

The president's Belt and Road Initiative, announced in late 2013, aims to restore China's old maritime and overland trade routes. Xi has said he hopes to increase trade with more than 40 countries to $2.5 trillion within a decade.

 

Xinjiang is at the heart of the new Silk Road into Central Asia. China is making huge investments in new railways running from eastern China through Xinjiang to Central Asia and on into Europe.

That should eventually cut transport times to some markets by weeks, giving Xinjiang companies an edge over manufacturers relying on ocean freight.

 

By subsidizing transport, staff training and insurance, and offering generous support for financing, Beijing's efforts to build a textile hub in Xinjiang could counter the tide of textiles investment pouring out of the country.

 

But take away the subsidies, and Xinjiang looks a lot less appealing. Freight costs on the first rail lines running west are still 50 percent higher than shipping costs.