China steel output surged 5,873 times in 70 years

"China's steel output has accounted for 52% of the global total." Xu Kuangdi, honorary chairman of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, made the above statement at the symposium on the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China. He said that China's steel production is currently the world's number one, but the product structure and production structure still need to be changed.

Gao Xiangming, president of the China Iron and Steel Association, said that in the past 70 years, China has been the world's largest modern steel production system from iron and steel to the world's largest. In 1949, China's steel output was only 158,000 tons, which was less than one-thousandth of the world's steel output at that time. The lack of steel and iron was a major problem that constrained the development of the national economy. In 2018, China's steel output reached 928 million tons, accounting for more than 50% of world steel production. The output surged by 5,873 times compared with 1949, completely ending the history of China's steel supply shortage.

In this regard, Wu Xiwei, former president of the China Iron and Steel Association and former vice minister of the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, said that China has become the world's largest shipbuilding country, the world's largest household appliance manufacturing country, a major construction machinery manufacturing country, and a major power generation and transformation equipment manufacturing country. The world's number one manufacturing country, with more than 200 industrial products ranking first in the world. However, Wu Xiyu said that China's steel industry still faces problems such as organizational restructuring and accelerating industrial concentration.

Xu Kuangdi pointed out that the world economy is currently in a state of contraction, and several developed countries have issued interest rate cuts, which are intended to stimulate the economy. Domestically, the speed of urbanization in China has gradually slowed down, and urban-rural integration is accelerating. But in this way, steel demand may be partially affected. Xu Kuangdi believes that the next step in the steel supply side reform is not only to reduce production capacity, but to combine ecological environmental impact and product structure adjustment to adjust production processes and product grades.

Wu Xiyu also said that organizational restructuring is the most comprehensive and fundamental adjustment in the various structural adjustments of China's steel industry. At present, it is the best time for the restructuring of the steel industry and the adjustment of organizational structure such as industrial concentration.