Xu Lejiang Visited Partners and Strategic Users in Korea and Japan

From 9th ~ 16th April, Baosteel Group Chairman of the Board Xu Lejiang visited Korea and Japan, as entrepreneur representative in Premier Wen Jiabao's party in the former, while the latter was a separate visit. During that time period, Xu Lejiang paid visits to the cooperation partners and strategic users in Korea and Japan, in which common understandings were reached on further expanding cooperation fields and pushing forward the healthy and orderly development of the iron and steel market of North East Asia.

Korea and Japan boast of the most advanced iron and steel manufacturing technology in the world, with significant impact on the steel market of North East Asia or even that of the world. During the trip, Xu Lejiang visited NSC, JFE, POSCO, Nisshin Steel, and Hitachi Metals, and had deep and friendly exchanges with such cooperation partners as Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation, MOL, NYK Line and Hanwa Co., Ltd. and such strategic users as HYSCO, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Dongbu Steel.

The Korean and Japanese enterprises attached great importance to the first visit of Xu as the Chairman of the Board of Baosteel Group Corporation since he took his office in last January. They congratulated Xu for taking his office as the Chairman of the Board, with hearty wishes that Baosteel make new development constantly under the leadership of him.

Xu expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the cooperation partners and strategic users for their support to Baosteel all these years. "Baosteel attaches great importance to the exchanges and common advancement with the cooperation partners and the strategic users," said Xu, "With regular and persistent exchanges of various levels, we hope to fulfill the goal of exchange of information, enhanced friendship, mutual benefit and co-development.

" In exchange with the Korean and Japanese enterprises, with an objective analysis on the merging trend of world iron & steel industry and the trend of the steel market of North East Asia, Xu introduced in detail; 1) Chinese government's policy on the development of iron & steel industry of structural readjustment and supporting the quality capacity and eliminating the bad; 2) future development plan and strategic measures of Baosteel.

They also had a thorough discussion on the following topics: 1) lessening of the trade friction in China's steel export; 2) expansion of the cooperation with Korean and Japanese enterprises in environment protection and energy saving; 3) enhancing of high-level exchange with the strategic users and cooperation partners; and 4) lowering of the shipping cost jointly.

The development trend of Chinese iron & steel industry and the development outlook of Baosteel have become the focus of Korean and Japanese media. In the interview with the reporters of Nisshin Steel Technical Report, Xu expressed that Baosteel would strive to achieve over 50 million tons of production capacity by 2012 by comprehensive means of joint venture, cooperation, merging and new constructions, to become a steel production basis with complete varieties and specification for the target market, and with a complete set of product series with fine quality steels as the core.

Baosteel's plan of building 10 million ton steel plant in Guangdong province, so called "the Zhanjiang project", has been included in the "11th five-year plan" of the government of Guangdong province.

During Premier Wen's visit in Japan, Howa Trading Co., Ltd., a Baosteel trading company in Japan, as the chairman of Chinese Enterprises Association in Japan, participated in a series of important activities, fully embodying the impact and position of China funded enterprises in Japan. In his stay in Japan, Xu also paid a special visit to Mr. Wang Yi, China's ambassador plenipotentiary extraordinary in Japan, and expressed gratitude to the supports and cares the Chinese Embassy in Japan have given to Baosteel Group and Howa Trading.