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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
The importance of examining the location of China's steel development is not confined solely to the steel industry. It reflects to a large extent, the Communist policy on industrial location in general. The new steel centres have been planned to form the nuclei of industrial complexes. To counteract the pre-Communist concentration of industry in the coastal areas, the Communist régime has emphasised from the beginning that a wide dispersion of industry is desirable from the standpoint of economic development and national defence. In planning new capital construction, therefore, regional development constitutes a key-note while sources of raw materials and fuel supply, consumption centres, future mechanisation of agriculture and national security become the major determinants of industrial locations. As a result of adherence to this policy, a new pattern has emerged for the location of China's steel industry.
1 In pre-Communist China, over three-quarters of the value of industrial output came from the coastal areas, which constituted less than 10 per cent. of the country.
2 These include the North, the East and the South-west, as no smelting facilities were installed in the South or the North-west.
3 For planning rehabilitation, the policy of industrial dispersion was subservient to the objective of maximising the capital-output ratio.
4 Anshan Steel is the abbreviated form for the Anshan Iron and Steel Corporation. Wuhan Steel, etc., are similar abbreviations.
5 Before Soviet dismantling and removal of equipment and installations.
6 No. 2 steel plant was rehabilitated between November 1954 and December 1956.
7 Computed on the basis of data given in Kang-tieh (Metallurgy), Semi-monthly, Peking, No. 18, 1959, p. 806.
8 Chi-hua ching-chi (Planned Economy), No. 4, 1958, p. 22.
9 The blast furnace capacity of Paotow Steel constituted less than 4 per cent. of the 1961 national total.