BEIJING: China's annual crude steel production rose to over 1 billion tonnes for the first time in 2020, setting a record for a fourth year as steelmakers went into overdrive after the country reopened after lockdowns to control the spread of COVID-19.

The world's top steel producer churned out 1.05 billion tonnes of crude steel last year, up 5.2% from 2019 to increase for a fifth year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday.

Steel consumption had plunged in early 2020, when the world's second-largest economy had to lock down cities and suspend transportation to prevent coronavirus infections.

Demand picked up rapidly from the second quarter, however, as Beijing rolled out stimulus measures to spur infrastructure projects, with manufacturing taking up the baton when construction activities slowed during the off-peak season.

China's fixed-asset investment rose 2.9% in 2020 from the previous year. Its property investment jumped 7%, the NBS said in a separate statement.

Separately, China's 2020 stainless steel output rose 2.97% to 29.84 million tonnes, according to a survey of 32 producers by consultancy Mysteel.

While key industrial metals helped support China's quick recovery in 2020, the industry ministry has urged steelmakers to produce less this year as part of a low-carbon and green manufacturing push.

Hebei province, accounting for a quarter of China's total capacity, produced 229 million tonnes of crude steel in the first 11 months of last year, defying the target it set in 2018 to keep capacity within 200 million tonnes by end-2020.

China's state planner has suspended new steel capacity swap projects since early 2020.

Steel production in December was 91.25 million tonnes, said the NBS, compared with 87.66 million in November and up 7.7% from December 2019.

December's average daily output was 2.94 million tonnes, up 0.7% from November, according to Reuters calculations based on the NBS data.