In March 2021, China’s cotton imports recorded a 3 per cent M-o-M decline to reach 280,000 ton, reveal Custom Statistics. However, on a Y-o-Y basis, China’s cotton imported grew by 40 per cent. As per China Textiles, since 2020-21, China’s cotton imports have increased by 90 per cent Y-o-Y to reach 1.94 million tonne of cotton. Most of these imports were from Brazil, India and West Africa, while cotton imports from Central Asia declined significantly.

China’s cotton import base was relatively low due to the pandemic in the first half of 2020 and its cotton consumption recovered rapidly due to the large-scale vaccination. However, in the first quarter of 2021, China imported 970,000 tons of cotton in the first quarter of 2021, with a year-on-year increase of only 59 per cent. Since 2020, China has been actively purchasing cotton from the US. However, due to the outbreak, it’s processing, delivery and transportation of some US cotton contracts have been delayed.

Chinese cotton spinning enterprises and traders have concentrated most of their deliveries from September 2020 to February 2021. In October 2020, the state issued an additional 400,000 tonne of processing trade sliding scale duty import quota, which can be extended to the end of February 2021. Its 1 per cent tariff quota in 2020 of some textile enterprises was concentrated between October 2020 to February 2021, and the quota is relatively sufficient, the cotton price is attractive, and the downstream domestic and foreign sales orders increase, which lead to the increase of foreign cotton imports;

Xinjiang cotton restrictions have caused some export-oriented enterprises and processing agents to increase the signing and purchasing of foreign cotton and yarn in order to avoid the risk of performance.