Fearing internal competition with the growing export sector, Chinese textile companies are looking for stepping up investment in developing countries, the country’s assistant minister of commerce Yi Xiaozhun said.

Without committing any figure or target, Yi said that the domestic firms hoped to alleviate concerns about China’s dominant role in the global textile trade through such investments in view of the quota expiration by the yearend.

“Liberalisation or integration of textiles into the multilateral trading system will happen soon and I understand there are some concerns by some developing countries … about China’s export of textiles,” Yi said.

“You will see outward investment from China is going on and going up in the textile sector (and) we hope that can help developing countries.”