"China's steel production in 2005 over-expanded, which has made China a big export nation from being an import nation of steel," Zhou Dadi, director general of Energy Research Institute, National Development and Reform Commission said at a seminar held by deputies to the National People's Congress in Urumchi, capital city of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

It has been learnt that the output of crude steel last year in China accounted for 31 percent of the world's total, equivalent to the sum of that in Japan, the USA, Russia, South Korea and Brazil. According to the statistics, during the first four months this year, the steel production this year still expands rapidly. The output of pig iron and steel respectively made 44.9 and 32.9 percent of the world's, an increase of 19.6 percent over the same period of last year, and accounted for 86 percent of the world's total increase. The worldwide steel production increased by 6.4 percent in the same respect, and an increase of 0.9 percent without including China.

Zhou added that the trend of exporting steel in China kept on rising. During the first five months of this year, China exported 12.67 million tons of steel, an increase of 35.1 percent over the same period of last year; the import was 7.74 million tons, a reduction of 27.6 percent. In May alone, the steel export hit a monthly record of 3.49 million tons.

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