(Economic Observation) How can China's steel industry really tear off the label of "big but not strong"?

　　China News Service, Beijing, September 26 (Reporter Pang Wuji) China's steel industry, which has always accounted for half of the global steel industry in production for the past 10 years, has long been labelled as "big but not strong".

Faced with the triple pressures of volume reduction, quality improvement, and low-carbon development, how does the high-quality development path of China's steel industry take?

　　At the 2021 (third) China Steel High-Quality Development Standardization Forum held a few days ago, many industry experts pointed out that standards are the genes of quality. To have high quality, you must first have high standards.

The steel industry urgently needs to formulate a clear standardization strategy and a complete standardization system, which may become the key to the steel industry to achieve volume reduction, quality improvement, and low-carbon green development.

　　Since 1996, when steel output exceeded 100 million tons, China has maintained the world's largest steel output for 25 consecutive years.

In 2020, China's crude steel output will account for 56.7% of the world's total crude steel output.

Despite the largest scale, in a few high-end sectors, China's steel still relies on imports.

　　At the forum that day, Zhang Xiaogang, former chairman of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and chairman of the Starlight Alliance, took steel cord, which is regarded as the most difficult product in metal products, as an example, to explain China’s steel industry and the international advanced level. difference.

　　He pointed out that in 1995, the steel cord produced in China had 3-5 break points in a 10 kg plate.

However, with the rapid technological advancement of the domestic steel industry, by 2020, the domestic advanced level will be able to achieve only 6-10 breakpoints per 100 such plates, but it is far from the international advanced level of the same period (every 100 In each plate, only 2-3 breakpoints), there is still a certain gap.

　　Zhang Xiaogang said that bolts, high-speed rail parts and other products also have similar problems with steel cords.

In technical research, China's steel products can occasionally reach the best level in developed countries, but with poor repeatability and low pass rate. Therefore, from the perspective of technology, economy and safety, such products still mainly rely on imports.

　　Investigating the reason, he believes that this is because China's steel industry has both weak technical and quality technical foundations.

At present, the key to the high-quality development of the steel industry lies in solving the latter, that is, the weak technical foundation of industrial quality (the problem of scientific experiment verification capability).

How to solve?

The key is to realize mutual recognition of data, mutual recognition of standards and mutual recognition of recognition in the application of digital technology.

For example: the use of digital technology to ensure real-time monitoring and uploading of data, so that it cannot be tampered with, and thus has the prerequisite for mutual recognition.

　　After the transition to high-quality development of China's steel industry, Zhang Xiaogang said that Chinese steel companies will have differences in differentiated competitiveness, not just in scale.

　　Zhang Gang, member of the National Manufacturing Power Construction Strategy Advisory Committee, deputy chairman of the National Industrial Foundation Expert Committee, and deputy director of the China Standardization Expert Committee, also said here that new consumption is the key to expanding domestic demand in the future, and the demand for standardization and standardization optimization structure is all Exuberant.

　　Taking folding screen mobile phones as an example, it is predicted that the shipment volume of folding screen mobile phones in 2021 may increase more than two times year-on-year, and it is still expected to rise sharply thereafter.

The new consumer demand embodied in the folding screen mobile phone market puts forward new requirements on the base material of the mobile phone screen, resulting in new requirements for the quality of stainless steel precision strip steel (commonly known as "hand-tear steel").

However, the current standard technical indicators can not meet the quality requirements of the new product, so the corresponding group standards came into being.

　　Standards can also help companies open up markets and break foreign monopolies.

Taking pen tip steel as an example, Li Jianmin, chief engineer of Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Co., Ltd., revealed that for a long time, domestic production of high-grade free-cutting stainless steel materials for ballpoint pens has mainly relied on imports, and the production process of pen products is the core secret of foreign companies.

However, in 2018, the first domestic steel material standard in the pen-making field jointly drafted by Taigang and others was implemented.

Domestic products that meet this standard meet quality conditions such as good machinability and high corrosion resistance, which has changed the situation that China's pen industry has long relied on imports for raw materials.

　　Li Xinchuang, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chief Engineer of the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute pointed out that in the past few years, various standards have provided an important basis and guarantee for resolving China's excess steel production capacity, and are also an important starting point for green technology innovation and technological progress in the steel industry.

In the future, under the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, the low-carbon development of the steel industry will also urgently need standard support.

　　He said that the current low-carbon standards are far from supporting the low-carbon development needs of the steel industry, and standards for low-carbon management, low-carbon technology, low-carbon products, and full life cycle carbon footprint evaluation are seriously lacking.

The development of a comprehensive and systematic low-carbon standard is imminent.

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