Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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BEIJING (March 7): China's biggest steelmaking province, Hebei, will close its last "zombie" steel mills by the end of next year, the governor said on Tuesday, marking a small victory in the region's years-long battle to clean up its air and cut excess capacity.

This year, the province will shut four "zombie" mills, or plants that have stopped production but have not closed down, and another four in 2018, Governor Zhang Qingwei said at a briefing on the sidelines of the country's annual parliament meeting.

"We need to cut down the total number of steel plants, they can't be everywhere," he said.

The move helps solve a headache that has dogged the country as it has tried to make its bloated steel industry more efficient.

China, the world's top steelmaker, accounts for half of the world's output, but its oversupply is four times U.S. output levels.

But Hebei, a northern province with some of the country's smoggiest cities, still has a fight on its hands to cut its use of dirty fuels like coal and deal with the costly consequences of the restructuring: how to find new jobs or incomes for laid off workers.

Hebei is home to 104 mills that account for nearly a quarter of China's total steel output. The province has pledged to cut steel and iron making capacity by 31.17 million tonnes by 2017 and by 49.13 million tonnes by 2020.

Zhang repeated that the province plans to close all steel mills in the cities of Langfang, Baoding and Zhangjiakou, which will co-host the 2022 Winter Olympics with Beijing, by the end of 2020.

He also wants to cut the number of steel plants in the province and build 10 specialty steel mills by the end of 2020. 

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