MUMBAI (Reuters) - India has signed contracts to export 200,000 bales of cotton to China in the past one week, the head of a trade body said, after Beijing last week sought to impose tariffs on cotton supplies from the United States.

India, the world’s second-biggest cotton exporter, is expected to export 7 million bales (each of 170 kg) of the fiber in 2017/18 against 5.8 million bales shipped in the 2016/17 season, Atul Ganatra, president of the Cotton Association of India, told Reuters.

India is looking to sell 2.5 million to 3 million bales to China in the next season beginning October, up from around 800,000 bales of expected exports in the 2017/18 marketing year, Ganatra said earlier.