China holds the largest share of industrial capacity globally, representing nearly half of operating steelmaking and over a third of operating cement capacity. Overall, China is responsible for around 45% of industrial CO2 emissions worldwide. A system of this scale isn’t changed overnight, but the energy transition starts with transparent data.
Explore China’s heavy industry through four GEM datasets in one place. This tool combines the latest from the Global Iron and Steel Tracker, Global Cement and Concrete Tracker, Global Iron Ore Mines Tracker, and Global Chemicals Inventory to show the makeup of the world’s largest industrial base.
Where are China’s heavy industry plants?
Click to explore where China’s cement, chemical, and steel plants are located.
How many industrial sites are in each Chinese province?
See which provinces in China have the most steel plants, chemical plants, cements plants, and iron ore mines.
What is the capacity breakdown in each Chinese industry and province?
Explore operating capacities by production type and technical route across the cement, steel, and iron ore sectors. Click into each sector to view a detailed provincial profile.
Steel can be produced either via the traditional blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) route, which is highly carbon-intensive due to coal reliance, or the electric arc furnace (EAF) route using scrap and/or direct reduced iron (DRI), which generally produces fewer emissions.
Cement is produced by calcining limestone into clinker (the stage at which most CO2 is produced) before processing it into distinct cement types. The main types of cement are Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), which uses the highest proportion of high-emissions clinker, or blended cement, which uses supplementary materials to partially replace clinker.
As the heavy industry sectors in China evolve, it is critical to understand where capacity sits and by which methods it is produced to best support the net-zero transition. GEM’s data show just how vast China’s industrial production is, making its decarbonization ever more urgent.
These data are current as of June 2026.
Please note that the Global Chemicals Inventory does not currently offer facility capacity data, hence its exclusion from some visuals. Expanded chemicals data is forthcoming in November 2026.
