In 2021, China’s crude steel and finished steel outputs totaled 1.033 billion mt and 1.337 billion mt, down 3.0 percent and up 0.6 percent, respectively, year on year, as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on January 17.
The decrease was the first since 2016 and was mainly due to the government’s attempts to control pollution and its measures affecting major mills since the middle of last year. The year-on-year decrease in crude steel output was 0.4 percentage points faster than that recorded in the first 11 months last year, while for finished steel the increase was 0.4 percentage points slower than that recorded in the January-November period.
In 2021, China produced 868.57 million mt of pig iron, down 4.3 percent year on year, 0.1 percentage point faster than the decrease in the first 11 months.
In December alone, China’s pig iron, crude steel and finished steel outputs amounted to 72.1 million mt, 86.19 million mt and 113.55 million mt, down 5.4 percent, 6.8 percent and 5.2 percent year on year, respectively, while up 16.8 percent, 24.4 percent and 12.4 percent month on month, respectively.