China’s Economy Continues to See Robust Growth

China’s steel production has continued to grow year over year, contradicting all the hoopla about production cuts, according to Steel Market Update’s latest analysis of Chinese government data. Once each quarter, we publish the official statistics for Chinese GDP, industrial production, consumer price inflation and fixed asset investment. Many analysts don’t believe these self-serving Party figures, but we include them in our reports because of the importance of China in the global steel scene. And these numbers are all that’s available. Figure 1 shows published data released this week for the growth of GDP, industrial production and consumer prices through the fourth quarter of 2017.