Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c5.s3.t2.1

v1.c5.s3.t2.1

Manufactured cotton yarn was one of the main exports from India to China in the last quarter of the 19th century CE and the early years of the 20th century CE. The earliest Indian textile mills which were established in the 1850s initially produced cloth for the domestic market but they soon found that they could not compete with imported British cloth. Therefore, from the 1870s, Indian textile entrepreneurs, many of whom already had experience of trading with China in commodities like raw cotton and opium, turned to the China market where there was a demand for cotton yarn. Although China had been importing manufactured cotton yarn almost entirely from Britain until that point, there developed a preference for the coarse type of yarn produced by the Indian mills in the Chinese handloom industry.