On January 21st, the soft commodities sector in the domestic futures market showed a differentiated pattern of "more gains than losses". Among them, cotton futures performed outstandingly. The main contract of Zhengzhou cotton futures fluctuated upward and strengthened its position overnight, closing up by 0.17% at 14,535 yuan/ton, injecting a glimmer of warmth into the recently sluggish textile industry chain. Considering the latest released retail, export and import data, the current cotton market shows a multi-factor game situation at both supply and demand ends. The middle-level textile enterprises are under significant operating pressure, and the industry is in a crucial transitional stage between the end of the year and the pre-holiday stock preparation. The subsequent market trend is worthy of close attention. 

Terminal consumption has maintained a steady growth with a slight slowdown. The growth rate of textile and apparel retail is slightly lower than that of social retail sales. 

At the end-consumer level, the latest retail data shows that domestic textile and clothing consumption has a "stable but slightly slowing" trend. Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicates that in December 2025, the total retail sales of consumer goods in the country increased by 0.9% year-on-year, and the cumulative year-on-year growth for the entire year was 3.7%. The consumption market as a whole maintained a recovery trend. Among them, the retail sales of clothing, shoes, hats, needles, and textiles, which are closely related to the cotton industry, showed a moderate performance. The month-on-month value in December increased by 0.6% year-on-year, and the cumulative year-on-year increase was 3.2%. Although it achieved positive year-on-year growth, the growth rate was slightly slower than the overall retail sales growth rate, indicating that the recovery of textile and clothing consumption is still insufficient. 

As the year comes to an end, the operation pace of the textile industry has significantly slowed down. The terminal demand has entered a period of phased contraction, which has become an important factor restricting the growth rate of consumption. According to market research, as of late January, domestic and foreign clothing orders have basically completed their delivery tasks for the year, and new orders have significantly decreased. Only a few home textile orders are still in the negotiation stage, and most of them are exploratory and small-scale orders, which are difficult to form a sustained growth support. Although the domestic market has some sporadic supplementary orders before the Spring Festival, the overall scale is limited, and the orders are mainly in the form of scattered small orders. Meanwhile, the willingness of the terminal channels to stock up has also declined simultaneously, further weakening the拉动 effect of the consumption end on the production end. 

The export market is under pressure, with the annual clothing exports declining by 5% compared to the previous year. 

The export market is facing certain pressure and has become an important variable that hinders the industry's recovery. Data shows that China's clothing exports decreased by 5% in 2025, and the export situation is clearly weak. Analyzing the reasons, on one hand, the global economic recovery is weak, and overseas demand remains persistently low. Brands and supermarkets are generally in a cautious wait-and-see state, the order pace has slowed down, and they adopt sporadic replenishment strategies to control inventory risks; on the other hand, factors such as unstable international economic and trade environment, tariff barriers, and geopolitical conflicts have also impacted China's textile and clothing exports. Although the Sino-US economic relations have eased somewhat and exports have shown marginal improvement, the overall recovery trend is still not obvious.

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