According to a video conference held Wednesday, cotton-related enterprises in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region denounced unreasonable sanctions imposed by some Western countries and expressed confidence in the development of the local cotton textile industry, despite such groundless sanctions.
Representatives from the Xinjiang cotton textile sector spoke at a seminar co-hosted by the People’s Republic of China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva and the Xinjiang regional government.
The United States and some Western countries have imposed arbitrary sanctions on Xinjiang’s cotton industry and enterprises based on lies and false information. “These acts are blatant power politics and bullying,” said Erkin Tuniyaz, vice chairman of the regional government in Xinjiang. Halmurat Musa’s company, Aksu Huafu Textiles Co., with some 5,500 employees was listed on the U.S. Commerce Department’s “entity list” in 2020 and boycotted by some Western clothing brands.
Western brands’ blind decision to boycott Xinjiang cotton not only cost them the Chinese market and affected their reputation but also hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, said Halmurat Musa, one of the representatives of Xinjiang enterprises. He added that the company has adjusted market and customer structure by expanding the domestic market and actively striving for other overseas markets other than the United States. “Their unreasonable sanctions will only make us more united,” he said.
Production and sales of cotton yarn rose by 56 percent and 91 percent year on year between January and July, and its revenue in the seven-month period more than doubled compared with the same period last year. “Now the gain in the domestic market has made up for the losses of the overseas orders,” he said. HR staff of a Kuqa-based clothing company also affected by the sanctions say their lives are gradually returning to normal.
