China, the world's largest steel maker, produced a total of 683.27 million metric tons of crude steel last year, 8.9% more than that in the previous year, said the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.
 

Last month, the country's crude steel output rose 0.7% year on year to 52.16 million metric tons.
 

China produced 48.04 million metric tons of pig iron and 71.07 million metric tons of steel products in December, up 3.7% and 6.0% year on year, respectively.
 

In the whole of 2011, China's pig iron output rose 8.4% from the previous year to 629.69 million metric tons and its output of steel products increased 12.3% year on year to 881.31 million metric tons.
 

Zhu Jimin, Chairman of the China Iron & Steel Association, said earlier that the country's consumption of crude steel is expected to grow 4% to 700 million metric tons in 2012.