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Related Keywords: China to end stockpiling program, cotton consumption, cotton prices, create jobs, fiber to be imported, invest billions of dollars, NDRC, store in state reserves, Subsidies, textile factories, U.S. Department of Agriculture, weak market price, XPCC

China has assured to end a costly stockpiling program that has artificially exaggerated cotton prices. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) reluctant to accept the current weak market price, has urged the government to buy part of its crop and store it in state reserves, said two trade sources with knowledge of the issue.

XPCC, also known as the army corps, or 'bingtuan', has become a sort of state within a state and gained a dominant role in industries such as cotton, where it employs about 200,000 mainly Han Chinese on some of Xinjiang's best land.

Related Keywords: cotton farming, National Cotton Council, NCC survey, smallest cotton acreage, US cotton farmers, weak market price, worlds biggest exporter

The National Cotton Council (NCC) expects cotton farming in the world's biggest exporter to fall to 9.4 million acres in 2015. That would be the smallest cotton acreage since 2009, according to U.S. government data.

U.S. cotton farmers are expected to reduce acreage by nearly 15 percent this year as weak market prices force them to switch to other crops.

The NCC survey, widely watched as one of the earliest indicators of the next season's production, is based on a questionnaire mailed in mid-December to producers across the 17-state cotton belt.