There are many studies of the Chinese cotton textile industry for various time periods. But most of them are rather limited in the scope of inquiry, and, occasionally, their interpretations cannot stand rigorous economic reasoning. The present study is an attempt to reorganized the data, which are widely scattered in an extremely large number of Chinese historical documents and modern writings, in a systematic fashion, and to provide an economic analysis. Since this study covers the entire history of the industry, the limitations of space do not allow us to deal with every detail; attention must be focused on the key issues.