The textile industry of northeast China´s Heilongjiang province is currently dominated by five major subsectors including flax, chemical fiber, cotton spinning, wool spinning and garment sectors. In 2007, the province´s textile industry gained total sales revenue of 4.38 billion yuan with a year-on-year increase of 7.1 percent, and good delivered for export decreased by 5.7 percent to 590 million yuan. In 2008, the industry witnessed a decline owing to an array of negative factors like RMB appreciation, rising material and labor costs, and decline in exports. Heilongjiang Provincial Textile Industry Association encouraged enterprises to adopt advanced equipments with high degree of automation to promote industrial efficiency. The recommended technologies are listed as follows:

(1) Cotton textile sector:

To expend the application of blowing-carding machine and promote the development of ring frames link with automatic winders;
To adopt high speed rotor spinning technology for medium and high count yarn production;
To widely popularize high-speed ring spinning technology and high-speed sizing machine;
To adopt carding machine and drawing frame with big can and auto-changer;
To raise the proportion of combed yarn, knotless yarn, and shuttleless cloth;
To adopt advanced spinning technologies like air-jet spinning and compact spinning technology;

(2) Hemp textile sector:

To build high quality flax and hemp industry base;
To encourage R&D on hemp fiber spinnability;
To promote the application of hemp fiber degumming technology with characters of low pollution and low energy consumption, wastewater treatment technology and advanced spinning technology;
R&D on sizing process and sizing agent for flex;
To promote the application of dust removal equipment;
R&D and application of new dyeing and finishing technologies for hemp fabric, cleaner production technology, water and energy saving solution, wastewater treatment technology;

(3)Chemical fiber sector:

To further develop various kinds of modified polyester and differential fibers;
To develop renewable resource polyesters;
To develop differential and functional polyester/acrylic fibers.

Source: China Textile Leader