``Domestic demand accounts for about 70 percent of industry growth,'' said Wang Donghua, a spokesman for Shandong, China- based Weiqiao Textile Co., the country's largest cotton textile maker. ``Our economy is becoming more consumer-driven instead of investment-driven. That's our main driver of growth.''

Weiqiao Textile bought 65 percent more cotton last year, added 35,000 workers and spent 3.6 billion yuan ($435 million) increasing output for customers including Levi Strauss & Co.

U.S. and European Union governments want to stem the flood of apparel exports from Weiqiao and 100,000 other Chinese textile companies since a four-decade-old system of quotas on textile trade ended on Dec. 31. Weiqiao, which makes fabric for jeans and bed linen, says a domestic economy growing at 9.5 percent a year offers plenty of local sales opportunities.

China's textile and apparel sales rose 23 percent to $319 billion in 2004 from a year earlier, the state-run China Textile News reported on its Web site, citing figures from the China National Textile & Apparel Council. Exports, which account for 30 percent of the total, rose 21 percent to $97.4 billion.

``Last year, and since the beginning of this year, the growth of domestic sales clearly surpassed export growth,'' Sun Huaibin, a director at the council, said in a phone interview from Beijing on May 19.

China's textile makers, who spent $14.3 billion last year on factories and materials, say local demand will buffer any slowdown in orders from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Carrefour SA because of a looming trade war with the U.S. and Europe.

Incomes

China's per capita disposable income in urban areas, home to a third of the population, rose 11 percent to 2,938 yuan from a year earlier in the first quarter, and those in rural areas increased 16 percent to 967 yuan, official figures show.

China's textile manufacturers ``are interested in developing their own brands for their own market with potentially higher margins than churning out millions of low-margin T-shirts for Western retailers,'' said Roger Tredre, editor-in-chief of Worth Global Style Network in London.

Textile companies in China make 17 percent of the clothes worn in the world, as measured by dollar value. The share is growing as Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart and other retailers seek to get more of their goods from lower-cost Chinese suppliers.

Wal-Mart was expecting to save 12-15 percent on apparel costs this year with the removal of the quota system, Joseph Teklits, an analyst with Wachovia Securities Inc. in Baltimore, said in a March 18 report.