Andrew Batson — The real story of how China took over the world of metals

The fact that China is the world’s largest producer of steel and many other metals is by now one of those ordinary pieces of background information, so unremarkable that is mentioned in passing in news stories without further explanation. Yet it is still a fairly amazing fact, and I suspect that most people, if asked to explain how it happened, would not be able to come up with more than a mix of “China is big,” “government subsidies” and some hand-waving.

The real story is much more interesting, and is well told by my friend Michael Komesaroff in a new paper published by CSIS: “Make the Foreign Serve China: How Foreign Science and Technology Helped China Dominate Global Metallurgical Industries.” The details are the heart of the tale, so it’s hard to summarize, but here are some excerpts to give a flavor of the conclusions...

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The real story of how China took over the world of metals

Andrew Batson