Iron and steel, as the main raw material of modern industry, plays a key role in the development of national industrialization and has attracted great attention from all countries. In the late Qing Dynasty, China was home to Asia's largest steel company, the Hanyang Iron Works, which produced the largest steel in Asia. However, during the first period, China's steel production regressed, even less than India's. During the "** decade", that is, between 1927 and 1937, China's steel production was only 1 27 times that of India. How did this huge gap come about?This concerns the situation in the late Qing Dynasty.
In the late Qing Dynasty, although the Hanyang Iron Works led China's steel output over India, due to poor management and other reasons, the plant lost money for a long time and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Japan's long-term borrowing backs for Hanyeping (a steel conglomerate consisting of Hanyang Iron Works, Pingxiang Coal Mine, and Daye Iron Mine) gradually took control of China's largest steel company. Other sporadic small steel enterprises in China have limited production capacity, and this situation has continued until the first period and further deteriorated. The steel industry is a heavy industry, with huge investment and a long return cycle, which requires strong support from the state. However, during the ten years of chaos during the Beiyang period, the state failed to invest enough energy and capital to set up large iron and steel enterprises. During the National ** period, despite the emergence of the "** decade", the development was mainly light industry, and the progress of heavy industry was slow, and only some local warlords established smaller steel mills. For example, in 1926, the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan imported German and Japanese machinery and equipment to build a small steel factory. In addition, there are some private iron and steel enterprises in China, such as Hexing Iron and Steel Plant, Daxin Iron and Steel Plant, etc., but their scale is limited and their production capacity is not high, so the national steel output in 1927 was only 30,000 tons, and it was barely increased to 50,000 tons until 1935. Although the national ** planned to build a steel plant in Xiangtan ** with an annual output of 10-150,000 tons of steel in 1936, the project was only on paper before the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War.
Unlike China, British control over India was not simply exploitation and oppression, although it was a British colony. Britain not only granted India a considerable degree of autonomy, but also encouraged India to develop an independent private economy. India is rich in high-quality iron ore and coal resources, which are well suited to develop the steel industry. With the support of the British, India's steel industry is booming. Indian steel companies can not only easily import British technology and management experience, but also make full use of the market and resources of Britain and its colonies. As a result, the Indian steel industry has risen rapidly. In 1918, India established the local Indian Iron and Steel ***, which produces steel not only to meet domestic demand, but also to export overseas, with strong international competitiveness. By 1939, India's annual steel production had reached 350,000 tons. By the end of World War II, India's three homegrown steel companies had a crude steel production capacity of nearly 1 million tonnes, and India had become a true steel powerhouse. India produces more steel than China, but its population is smaller than China's, so its per capita steel production is much higher than that of war-torn China.
However, although China got off to a slow start, after the founding of the People's Republic of China and under the leadership of the new China, steel production quickly surpassed that of India, and today China is the world's largest steel producer.