Xinhua
23 Apr 2025

A drone photo shows a cotton picker operating in a field in Awat County of Aksu, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Oct. 24, 2024. (Xinhua/Gao Han)Editor's note: Xinjiang, the largest cotton-producing area in China, is entering this year's cotton planting season with vigor. In this three-part series, Xinhua will map the past and present of Xinjiang's cotton industry, revealing its resilience and continued dynamism despite the sanctions imposed under false claims of "forced labor" from the West. This second installment explores how large machinery has replaced manual labor in cotton fields and how it has fueled the rise of Xinjiang's cotton harvester industry.URUMQI, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Despite April being the cotton sowing season in northwest China's Xinjiang, production of cotton harvesters is already at full tilt inside local factories to prepare for the autumn harvest.Among them is the Xinjiang branch of China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (CRCHI), which has seen surging overseas orders over the past two years. To cater to the neighboring Central Asian markets, the company rolled out a diesel-electric cotton harvester in 2024."Our new model meets the row-spacing requirements of our Central Asian customers and aligns with the global shift toward green energy," said Zhang Ruquan, a senior engineer at the CRCHI Xinjiang branch, who expects the company's overseas sales to multiply this year.The rise of local companies is only recent, as U.S.-made harvesters have long played the leading role in Xinjiang's mechanized cotton farming. The change occurred when a technology blockade and "forced labor" smears prompted Xinjiang to ramp up innovation and gain a foothold in agricultural machinery.Visitors view a cotton picker displayed at the 8th China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, June 27, 2024. (Xinhua/Ding Lei)Data from Urumqi Customs show that exports of the region's cotton harvesters rose from 44 units in 2022 to 223 units in 2024, and in the first two months this year, the export figure surged 350 percent year on year. Among the main export destinations are Central Asian countries, as well as Trkiye, Egypt and India.Xinjiang's newly gained advantage in agricultural machinery production is no accident. The region is one of the leading cotton-producing areas globally -- its output of 5.69 million tonnes in 2024 accounted for over a fifth of the world's total. Massive cotton fields and agricultural mechanization have created a thriving market for farming machines.Data has shown that the mechanized harvesting rate in Xinjiang was some 35 percent in 2014. By 2024, the region saw a 100 percent mechanization rate of cotton planting and approximately 90 percent for harvesting. In recent years, Xinjiang has deployed over 7,000 machines annually in cotton harvesting.In the past, the mechanization drive was mostly powered by U.S.-branded cotton pickers, which had entered the Xinjiang market as early as 1996 and dominated the region's cotton fields for two decades.However, as the "forced labor" claims and the ensuing sanctions from the West cast a gloom over the cotton industry, expensive U.S. imports saw declining charm in Xinjiang. In the meantime, local companies are catching up with cost-effective products to seize a greater market share.Wang Zhong, head of the Xinjiang Cotton Association, noted that in 2018, the sales of domestically produced cotton harvesters started to outpace imported ones in the region. Now, Chinese brands have held a share of over 80 percent in the Xinjiang market.He explained that domestic branded cotton pickers boast lower prices and operational costs. For some models, prices stand at about half of those imported ones, while the operational costs are about one-third of those for their foreign counterparts.Though U.S. harvesters still maintain some technological edges, "China's cotton harvesters are narrowing the technological gap through relentless innovation," Wang added.Xinjiang's harvester producers told Xinhua that the technology blockade by the United States and smear campaigns against Xinjiang cotton have prompted them to double down on technological innovation and eventually achieve independent production.A worker checks a cotton picker at an agricultural machinery manufacturing company in Wusu, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Feb. 28, 2024. (Xinhua/Zhao Ge)Xinjiang Boshiran Intelligent Agricultural Machinery Co., Ltd., founded in Xinjiang's Wusu City in 2009, has developed more than 30 models of agricultural machinery, such as cotton planters, sprayers and harvesters, which cover the crop's entire growth cycle.Bai Jinyan, the company's market planning director, said their cotton harvesters have gained prominence for their fuel efficiency and intelligent features, securing orders from Xinjiang and other Chinese provincial-level regions. In 2019, the company began to receive sporadic orders from abroad.In October 2023, Boshiran initiated the export of 54 cotton harvesters worth 80 million yuan (about 11 million U.S. dollars) to Uzbekistan, which was then the largest export deal of such Xinjiang-produced machinery in terms of transaction volume.CRCHI's Xinjiang branch has developed eight cotton harvester models, featuring technologies such as China's homegrown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and automatic row alignment. Its tech-savvy machines have become a poster boy of the local drive to boost the mechanization of cotton farming."After I click on my mobile phone, BDS will guide the machinery along designated routes and harvest cotton efficiently," said Ehemat Tursun, a farmer using a domestically-made harvester, in Xayar, one of southern Xinjiang's key cotton-producing counties."Cotton picking is no longer manual labor, as people do not need to bend down and pick the crop, but rather just monitor tasks conducted by machines. This could hardly be imagined decades ago," he added.