China continues to hold the global lead in crude steel production, with an estimated 67.4 million metric tons recorded in December 2023. This represented a decrease of approximately 13 percent compared to its production in December of the previous year. During that time given, India, Japan, the United States, and Russia were far behind China in steel production..
China as the global leader
With a recorded 99.5 million metric tons of crude steel yield, May 2021 remains the highest production peak for China to date. Since then, the country experiencing significant fluctuations in steel production. China's "zero-Covid" policy, therefore, implementing sequential lockdowns in various cities, caused a significant setback in the steel production network of the country. The government's interventions to eliminate the spread of the virus decreased the steel demand in many lines of work, predominantly in the construction sector. Despite the bottlenecks that China currently faces, the country has remained the global leader in crude steel production.
Crude Steel Production Worldwide
Production in Russia overall decreased throughout the given months, especially in June 2022; the production volume dropped by 21 percent compared to the previous month of 2022. However, high oil prices and government initiatives sustain the steel industry in the country, despite facing severe sanctions due to the Russia- Ukraine war. India saw a notable drop in crude steel production by 65.4 percent between February 2020 and April of that same year. Later, this figure increased to 10.6 million metric tons owing to India’s strong domestic demand for steel. Japan and the United States also suffered a dip in production in April 2020, though not as severe as in India. Since then, steel production in both countries has been weakly increasing, with oscillations. Increased material costs and explicitly hiking interest rates in the United States have been the main reasons for the drawbacks in production in Japan and the US.
