In the first half of the year, the decline in China's textile exports gradually narrowed, down 0.38% year-on-year.

From January to June 2019, China's home textile exports reached US$12.57 billion, a slight decrease of 0.38% over the same period of last year. The decline showed a trend of narrowing month by month. In the same period, the export volume dropped slightly by 0.04%, and the average export price dropped slightly by 0.34%. Overall, home textile exports remained stable in the first half of the year, and the decline in exports was 2.1 percentage points lower than the overall decline in textile and apparel exports.

Analysis of major export categories:

Exports of bedding, curtains and kitchen textiles continued to grow, and towel exports fell sharply.

The main export commodities of home textiles are bedding, accounting for about 44% of the total exports, followed by carpets, blankets, towels, curtains, etc., which account for about 10% of home textile exports.

From January to June, China's exports of bedding, curtains and kitchen textiles increased by 2.1%, 4.2% and 7.4% respectively, while exports of carpets and blankets decreased by 5.8% and 0.7% respectively. The decline in towel exports was as high as 12.2%, which was rare in recent years. The main reason was that some of the main enterprises had a large gap in cotton demand in the first quarter and the cost of cotton used increased.