The China commodities super-cycle is over. Will there be another boom?

China’s massive industrialisation and urbanisation drove a huge commodities boom that has run its course, but some executives are hopeful it will be replaced.

Workers at a construction site in Shanghai. China’s steel production fell to a four-year low in 2024. Bloomberg

Leslie Hook, Joe Leahy and Wenjie Ding

Jan 16, 2025 – 3.26pm

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Waking from a nap at his desk, Xiao, a steel trader from Wuhan in central China, reflects on how, at the end of one of the greatest booms in recent economic history, he is a lucky survivor.

About half of his competitors in this gritty office park, built near the site of China’s first ironworks, have gone bust during the country’s three-year-long property crisis. The park itself is overshadowed by the enormous concrete skeleton of an unfinished real estate project.

Financial Times