A cotton picking machine moves in a cotton field in Dolatbag town of Bachu county, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. File Photo: Xinhua

A total of 5.98 million tons of cotton were produced nationwide in China in 2022, up 4.3 percent over the previous year, among which over 90 percent was produced in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, official data showed on Monday.

Xinjiang's cotton output increased 5.1 percent year-on-year to 5.39 million tons this year. It accounts for 90.2 percent of the nation's total output, up 0.7 percentage points over the last year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed.

The nation's cotton planting area recorded 45 million mu (3 million hectares), shrinking 418,000 mu compared to that in 2021. Though the overall planting area dropped slightly, the country saw overall output increased due to growing output per mu.

China's cotton output per mu increased 5.3 percent to 132.8 kilograms. Its Xinjiang region's output per mu was higher at 143.9 kilograms, up 5.5 percent over the previous year.

As the primary cotton producer in China, Xinjiang has realized a high degree of mechanization along its whole cotton production chain. According to China Media Group, the mechanization rate of Xinjiang's whole cotton production process exceeded 95 percent this year.

However, the production in the Yangtze River Basin, which mainly includes East China's Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi provinces and Central China's Hubei and Hunan provinces, dropped due to the continued high temperature and dry weather from July to August, Wang Guirong, an NBS official, said in a statement.

Total production in the Yangtze River Basin area was 239,000 tons this year, down 2 percent.