(Bloomberg) -- China, the world's largest cotton consumer, reduced imports of the fiber by 14 percent in 2008 from a year earlier as the textile industry Chinese struggled to cope with weak demand, the China Cotton Association said.

China imported 2.11 million metric tons of cotton last year at an average price of $1,654 a ton, 17 percent higher than 2007, the Beijing-based group said yesterday in a report on its Web site, citing customs data. Exports of apparel and textiles grew 8.2 percent to $185.1 billion, compared with a 19 percent growth rate in the previous year, the association said in a separate report.

About two-thirds of textile mills and yarn spinners were losing money or on the edge of losing money because of weak demand from the international market, said the group, which is made up of farmers, ginners, mills and industry researchers. A lot of them faced capital shortage and climbing inventories.

The textile exports may slow further, exerting a bigger impact on cotton acreage and the ginning business, should the global economy worsen and governments use trade barriers to curb unemployment, said the group, China's biggest cotton-industry organization.

Cotton imports from the U.S., the world's biggest exporter of the fiber, fell 12 percent last year to 988,000 tons from a year earlier, while buying from India, the second-largest grower, totaled 607,000 tons, down 4 percent, according to the group. Purchases from the two countries accounted for 76 percent of China's total imports.