On August 13, 2026, a closed-door meeting in Qingdao laid bare the chronic pain of the cotton textile industry: raw material costs kept rising while terminal orders showed no sign of recovery, and the failure of price transmission became the most concentrated complaint among participating companies. Dong Kuiyong, president of the China Cotton Textile Association, bluntly stated that the industry's biggest dilemma has shifted from a single cost pressure to a systemic challenge of profit repair across the entire chain.
Event Background
The meeting, convened by the Raw Material Industry Chain Branch of the China Cotton Textile Association, brought together key players including Henan Tongzhou Cotton Industry and the National Cotton Trading Market. The session reviewed the branch's past year of work: multiple policy recommendations to authorities, in-depth field research on enterprise demands, and the building of upstream-downstream communication platforms. More noteworthy, however, was the next-step plan revealed in the work report by branch head Wei Gangmin: advancing reforms in cotton system, import quota, target price, and reserve cotton rotation. This signals that policy loosening could become a core variable in the raw material market over the next two years.
Vice president Jing Shenquan's opening remarks offered a judgment worth chewing on: the domestic and international economic environment is complex and volatile, with the industry facing a triple squeeze of weak terminal demand, restructuring of foreign trade patterns, and rising production costs. These three pressures are not isolated—weak demand shifts orders to lower-cost regions, foreign trade restructuring forces supply chains to adjust faster, and rising costs directly erode already thin margins. When these pressures stack, the traditional model of relying solely on cotton cost control has reached its limit.
Industry Impact
Among the five directions proposed by Dong Kuiyong, the most transformative is the second: broadening raw material supply horizons and optimizing a diversified fiber structure. He explicitly required the branch to strengthen industrial research and supply chain support for polyester staple fiber, viscose staple fiber, Lyocell, and new bio-based fibers. This sends a clear signal: the cotton textile industry is shifting from 'cotton-first' to 'multi-fiber parity.' For enterprises long dependent on cotton, this means product mix, procurement strategies, and even equipment configuration need reassessment.
Price transmission failure is the most painful reality. Upstream cotton price fluctuations cannot be effectively passed downstream, trapping spinning mills in a 'more production, more loss' dilemma. Dong's prescription is to emphasize financial tools, using professional means to hedge raw material price volatility. This is not a new phrase, but when the association president repeatedly stresses it in public and lists it as a branch work priority, it indicates that futures hedging and option combinations are transforming from optional tools into survival necessities for cotton textile enterprises.
For buyers, the meeting's most direct signal is that the application ratio of non-cotton fibers will become a key parameter in future procurement decisions. New materials like Lyocell and bio-based fibers not only have lower price volatility than cotton but may also serve as breakthroughs for differentiated products. For upstream ginners and traders, the pace of reserve cotton rotation and import quota reform will directly affect the pricing benchmark of domestic cotton, requiring close tracking of policy windows.