The increase took overall shipments for the last year to 407mn, slightly higher than a government-set target for the year of 400mn t.

In 2020, China's steel bar output was 266.391 million tons.

Late January 2021, the key steel enterprises produced 23.9426 million tons of crude steel, 21.1232 million tons of pig iron, 24.1601 million tons of steel and 3.6557 million tons of coke.

In December, 2020, the industrial power generation of the whole region was 19.1 billion kwh, up 5.1% year on year.

Hebei Crude Steel Production increased in 2020.

China imported 3.57mn t of coking coal last month, down by 4pc from 3.72mn t in November.

The country produced 30.14mn t of crude stainless steel in 2020, up by 2.51pc from 2019.

China also added a net 1.2GW of nuclear capacity to 49.9GW, 12.1GW of hydro to 370.2GW and 55.6GW of thermal capacity to 1,245GW.