China's Xinjiang Cotton Association said that international brands should give "full respect and trust" to Xinjiang cotton, following an executive's comment last week that clothing company Uniqlo does not take supply from the region.
The association called on brands like Uniqlo to resume the use of cotton from China's far western territory of Xinjiang to help maintain the "healthy and stable development of the global cotton textile industry", according to a statement made on its official WeChat account on Thursday.
In a British Broadcasting Corporation interview last week, Tadashi Yanai, CEO of Fast Retailing (9983.HK), Uniqlo's parent company, said the fashion chain does not use Xinjiang cotton in its products.
Rights groups and the U.S. government have accused China of abuses against Xinjiang's Uyghur population, and the issue of buying cotton or other goods from the region has been a geopolitical minefield for foreign companies with a large presence in China.
Beijing denies any abuses in Xinjiang, which produces the vast majority of China-made cotton.
"We expect international brands like Uniqlo to give full respect and trust to Xinjiang cotton," the association said.
"We call on the international community and textile and garment companies to maintain a high degree of rational analysis and choice of all anti-Xinjiang remarks and behaviours."
Xinjiang is part of Beijing's effort to shift labour intensive industries such as textiles out of the Pearl River Delta and into China's interior.
The textile hub is also a key part of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative, or "new silk road", an economic push spreading from western China to Central Asia and onwards towards Europe.
(This story has been refiled to remove the reference to Friday in paragraph 1)
