I. Why Any Look at Inner Mongolia's Textiles Begins With a Strand of Cashmere

When people discuss China's textiles, their eyes go to weaving and apparel powerhouses such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian. Inner Mongolia rarely makes that list. Its industrial image is coal, power, chemicals, rare earths and animal husbandry, and textiles are a modest share of its total output.

Yet Inner Mongolia holds a position no one else can substitute. It does not win on rows of looms or apparel orders; it concentrates nearly all of its weight on a single fiber, cashmere. Here is produced more than half of the world's fine goat cashmere. Inner Mongolia's cashmere output is roughly forty percent of China's, its cashmere products about sixty percent of the domestic market and close to half of the world market. The city of Ordos alone accounts for half of national cashmere processing and marketing capacity, and a third of the global figure. In other words, of every three cashmere products in the world, one passes through Ordos. This is a rare case in China's textile map of global-level standing built on a single category.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute treats Inner Mongolia's textiles as a regional sample not for its scale but for its shape: the entire weight of a chain rests on one fiber, with the upstream tied to grassland and cashmere goats, and the downstream reaching the premium shelves of international fashion, while the most common middle of cotton spinning, hemp, synthetic fiber and garment-making is thin here. This report endorses no investment judgment; it simply maps the real structure of Inner Mongolia's textiles and honestly notes where it is squeezed at both ends.

II. The Fiber Diamond: An Upstream Decided by a Goat and a Grassland

The root of Inner Mongolia's cashmere first grows on the goat.

Cashmere is not wool. It is the fine, soft underdown a cashmere goat grows at the base of its coarse hair to survive winter, combed out each spring, with one goat yielding only tens to a hundred or so grams a year. Cashmere quality is set by the fineness, length and whiteness of the fiber, and those in turn are set by breed and grassland climate together. Otog Banner in western Inner Mongolia produces the Arbas white cashmere goat, whose cashmere is fine and long, soft, strong, lustrous and pure white. The industry calls it the fiber diamond and soft gold, and it ranks among the best cashmere breeds in the world today. In 2006 the Arbas cashmere goat entered the national first-class list of protected livestock genetic resources and was registered as a geographical-indication agricultural product. Bayannur's Erlangshan white cashmere goat, called the king of fibers, has won gold for several years at the international goat congress in Italy and is likewise under geographical-indication protection.

This means Inner Mongolia's upstream edge is not entirely manufactured; it is decided by a particular goat and a particular grassland, the hardest part to replicate elsewhere and its truest moat. But that foundation is also fragile. Goat rearing is tied directly to grassland carrying capacity, and overgrazing harms the range, so output is bounded by an ecological red line. At the same time fine domestic raw cashmere falls short of demand, and the industry leans increasingly on imports from Mongolia and elsewhere, with prices swinging accordingly. The diamond grade of a single fiber is both Inner Mongolia's moat and its ceiling.

III. The World Cashmere Capital: How Ordos Lifted One Fiber to Global Class

If the grassland and the goat decide the raw material, the one that turned this fiber into a global-class industry is Ordos.

The Ordos Group is the undisputed lead on this chain. The company, which began as a single cashmere-sweater factory in Dongsheng District, now stretches the chain from pasture to international shelves: in Dongsheng District alone it stores five thousand tonnes of raw cashmere a year and produces two thousand tonnes of dehaired cashmere and over ten million cashmere products. In 2024 the appraised value of the Ordos brand exceeded 180 billion yuan, ranking for more than a decade among the top of China's textile and apparel sector. It has also split a single brand into a tiered family of product lines: the top-tier 1436 uses very small quantities of young-goat cashmere in limited runs, while ERDOS, Ordos 1980 and BLUE ERDOS each hold a different segment, and a French designer was brought in as creative director, an attempt to turn an old name into an international one.

The weight of Ordos alone makes the point: the city produces about 3,500 tonnes of cashmere a year, close to sixty percent of Inner Mongolia's output, nearly a quarter of China's and over a tenth of the world's, while its processing and marketing capacity is half the national and a third of the global figure. Around the Ordos Group, Inner Mongolia has also gathered processors such as Luwang, Weixin, Dongda Mongolia King, Zhaojun, Pangu and Chifeng Cashmere, forming a relatively complete cashmere chain from raw-cashmere storage and dehairing through spinning, knitting and garment-making. In 2024 the full cashmere chain in Inner Mongolia generated over 18 billion yuan in output value. What makes this chain unusual is that it was not built by piling up cheap contract work; it genuinely carried a native fiber from pasture all the way to the height of a world cashmere capital.

IV. The Likes of Linhe: The Other Half of the Industry, Hidden in the Combing Workshops

Beyond the halo of the world cashmere capital lies a less visible but equally important part of Inner Mongolia's cashmere, the dehairing and distribution of raw cashmere.

When cashmere is combed off the goat it is raw cashmere mixed with coarse hair and impurities, and only after precise dehairing into dehaired cashmere does its value multiply, a step that is the hidden hinge of the whole chain. Linhe District in Bayannur is a stronghold of this link: with dozens of local cashmere-spinning firms, it holds about a fifth of the nation's cashmere-processing volume and has become one of the distribution hubs for the trade in Inner Mongolia and beyond. In recent years local firms have joined forces to build the country's largest dehaired-cashmere distribution base, turning the dirty, hard work of combing into scale.

But the real state of this segment is a reminder to stay clear-eyed. Among Linhe's cashmere-spinning firms, apart from a few key enterprises, most are small in scale, modest in process and equipment, and weak in innovation, lingering at dehairing and primary processing and earning hard money. The effort to consolidate resources and push technical upgrading and branding through a dedicated cashmere-spinning industrial park is itself proof that this link is still scattered and still weak. This half of the industry supports the processing base of Inner Mongolia's cashmere, yet it also reveals that beyond a leader like Ordos, a great many small and mid-sized firms remain stuck at the thinnest-margin position on the chain.

V. The Cotton-Hemp-Synthetic Middle: Inner Mongolia's Thinnest Stretch

Look away from cashmere, and the rest of Inner Mongolia's textiles is far thinner.

The real bulk of China's textiles lies along the long middle chain of cotton spinning, synthetic fiber, dyeing-finishing and garment-making, and that is exactly the stretch Inner Mongolia lacks. It is not for want of raw material; Inner Mongolia is itself an important wool region, with wool spinning, carpets and felt all present. But a cotton and synthetic-fiber cluster of real scale and national voice has essentially never grown here. Against the textile belts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which combine design, fabric, weaving, dyeing and brand in one place, Inner Mongolia's textiles look almost like a curve that bulges only at the cashmere end, level everywhere else.

This lopsidedness has its reasons. Inner Mongolia sits inland, with low population density, less textile labor and supporting industry than the coast, and bulk inputs such as cotton sourced and sold elsewhere; it lacks the locational conditions for conventional textiles. Cashmere, by contrast, is the resource that is its own and that no one can take, so the industry naturally concentrates at that end. The result is that Inner Mongolia holds a global-class strength in cashmere yet is nearly blank in the conventional textile middle that best absorbs employment and builds industrial depth. A chain that bulges at only one point means its resilience is staked almost entirely on the fortunes of that single point.

VI. Squeezed at Both Ends, and the Institute's Judgment

Drawing these threads together, Inner Mongolia's textiles take an extremely uneven shape: in the single category of cashmere it has reached world class, with an upstream of fiber-diamond Arbas goats, a midstream leader in Ordos holding a third of global processing, and a dehairing and distribution base in places like Linhe; while the conventional middle of cotton, hemp, synthetic fiber and garments is its thinnest link. The whole chain is like a taut strand of cashmere, fine and precious, yet easily pulled at both ends.

Its risks are concrete, and they cluster at the two ends. Upstream, goat rearing is hard-bounded by grassland carrying capacity, fine domestic raw cashmere falls short of demand and leans increasingly on imports, so neither price nor supply is in its own hands. Downstream, cashmere prices rise with raw-material and processing costs, and in an environment of more rational consumption, getting premium brands to truly stand and keeping the added value inside Inner Mongolia remains the hard problem; the leaders hiring international designers and building tiered brands are precisely doing this remedial work. Caught in between are a great many small and mid-sized firms doing dehairing and primary processing for hard money, and a conventional textile middle that is all but absent.

For upstream suppliers serving Inner Mongolia's textile industry, whether selling cashmere-dehairing equipment, spinning machinery, dyeing-finishing aids or packaging and logistics, reaching the region's cashmere and cashmere-spinning factory customers in bulk can be done through Tianxia Gongchang, filtering the directory of Inner Mongolia's textile factories and their decision-makers' contacts along both region and industry, turning upstream customer development from house-by-house inquiry into reading a map.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute's judgment is this: the story of Inner Mongolia's textiles is, in essence, the story of a single fiber. It need not, and can hardly, copy the full-chain textile pattern of Jiangsu and Zhejiang; its true vital point is whether it can hold and use well the one global-class card it owns, cashmere. Holding it means keeping goat germplasm and grassland ecology inside the ecological red line, so the raw-material end is not led by imports and price. Using it well means spreading the pasture-to-world-shelf capability Ordos has proven to more native firms, so the small and mid-sized factories earning hard money in the combing workshops can move a little toward design, brand and higher value. That a single strand of cashmere can hold up a world cashmere capital is already a rarity in China's textiles; how long and how steadily it can hold depends on whether Inner Mongolia can free both ends of that strand from being held by others. That task is harder than combing out a few more tonnes of cashmere, and more worth doing.

Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (directory of Inner Mongolia textile factories and industry data)
  • Xinhua Inner Mongolia: how Chinese cashmere warms the world
  • China Agricultural University News, People's Tribune: the world dream of China's cashmere capital; observing Inner Mongolia's high-quality full-chain cashmere development
  • China News Service, The Paper: super industrial chain, how far Ordos is from the world cashmere capital
  • China Financial Information Network: financial analysis, how Ordos shines with cashmere
  • Securities Times, Xinhua: Ordos practicing green manufacturing; from old name to international fashion transformation
  • 21st Century Business Herald: dialogue with Ordos Holding Group president Wang Zhen on upgrading the cashmere industry
  • CNR Inner Mongolia, Otog Banner: Otog Banner building a cashmere-goat brand; the Arbas white cashmere goat
  • Bayannur Municipal Government: Erlangshan white cashmere goat geographical indication; analysis of the survival of Linhe agricultural-product processing firms
  • Bayannur Economic Development Zone: introduction to the cashmere-spinning industrial park project
  • China Federation of Industrial Economics: Ordos Investment Holding Group green and low-carbon transformation report