President Xi Jinping on Wednesday responded to accusations that China has pushed down global steel prices during a visit to London that has coincided with a wave of job cuts in the sector in Britain.
"The world is facing an overcapacity of iron and steel, not just the UK, this is because of the impact of the global financial crisis," Xi said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking through a translator.
"China has taken a series of steps to reduce the capacity. We have reduced more than 700 million tonnes of production capacity and you can just imagine our task to find jobs for those workers."
British Prime Minister David Cameron faced pressure from the opposition Labour Party and trade unions to do more to help the ailing industry, a day after one leading company, Tata Steel, put the blame on "a flood of cheap imports particularly from China".
Shortly after facing a string of questions on the issue in the House of Commons, Cameron raised the issue during two hours of talks with Xi at Downing Street, telling reporters afterwards that the two leaders had discussed the issue of "global over-supply".
Cameron's spokeswoman said he had "made clear there were challenges" but would not say whether he had used the phrase "dumping" during the discussion.
The British job losses have been blamed by experts on a range of factors including cheap Chinese imports but also high energy costs in Britain.
On Tuesday, the first day of Xi's visit, Tata Steel announced plans to cut 1,200 jobs in Britain.
This followed the recent loss of 2,200 jobs when the owners of the SSI steelworks in northeast England went into liquidation, while another firm, Caparo, went into administration Tuesday.
Earlier, Cameron faced questions in parliament from opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — who said the government's "non-intervention" in the industry had been "devastating".
Cameron insisted Britain had been pursuing "proper action against dumping" through the European Union and outlined a four-step plan to try and help the industry.
But when one MP from a steel-producing area asked him to make clear to the Chinese president the need to stop steel dumping, Cameron said: "I don't want to make promises I can't keep. We can't set the steel price here".
This prompted jeers from the opposition.
China's economy is slowing down and this week recorded its slowest growth for six years for third quarter gross domestic product.
The country has a huge surplus of steel and the chairman of industry giant Baosteel Group said Wednesday production could eventually shrink 20 percent, according to Bloomberg News.
China steel output seen shrinking 20%: industry chief
Shanghai (AFP) Oct 21, 2015 –
China's steel production could eventually shrink by 20 percent, a top executive of industry giant Baosteel Group said Wednesday, after the country's economic growth hit a six-year low.
"If we extrapolate the previous experience in Europe, the United States, Japan, their steel sectors have all gone through painful restructuring in the past, with steel output all contracting by about 20 percent," Bloomberg News quoted Baosteel chairman Xu Lejiang as saying.
"China will eventually get there as well, regardless how long it takes," Xu told reporters at a forum in Shanghai.
China has a huge steel glut, with Bloomberg reporting that a domestic industry group estimated output at 823 million tonnes last year.
The industry recorded losses of 18 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in the first eight months of this year, Xu said, reversing a 14 billion yuan profit from the same period a year ago.
Steel output was down 2.1 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2015, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.
China's economy logged its worst performance since the global financial crisis in the third quarter with gross domestic product growing just 6.9 percent — its slowest rate in six years, the government said on Monday.
Baoshan Iron and Steel Co., the main listed unit of Xu's group, closed down 3.81 percent in Shanghai on Wednesday.
