The latest customs statistics showed China’s import and export of textile machinery amounted to almost 5.4 billion US dollars in 2008, down 15.78% over the year-ago level, of which, the export value totaled 1.57 billion US dollars, up 2.79%, but the growth rate was down 20.75 percentage points compared with 2007; the imports fell by 21.58% to 3.83 billion US dollars. Knitting machinery was still the most requested machinery as the imports totaled 1.05 billion US dollars accounting for 27.44% of the total, but down 19.13% in value term. The imports of nonwoven machinery grew 19.96% to 64.57 million US dollars.

Source: China Textile Leader