On paper, China is at war with excess steel production. Over the past two years, authorities have cut millions of tonnes of capacity while the country’s most steel-intensive regions ordered mills to halve their output during winter.
Yet at the Jianlong steel mill in Shanxi province, steel workers complain they spent the season working overtime. “I have been doing 15-hour shifts at least once a week this winter,” grumbled a steelworker who gave his name only as Wang, and who has worked at the mill for the past decade.
Despite the severe seasonal cutbacks, China’s crude steel production increased by 6 per cent year-on-year in the first two months of 2018, and 2017 was a record year for steel production in the country.