It is real steel this time

The profits of the biggest companies of China, 中国, are soaring. The growth is mainly in four sectors: energy, chemicals, banking and steel.

The last point is especially ironic.

In 1958 China decided to make a Great Leap Forward, 大跃进, dà yuè jìn, into the industrialised world. Do do so, they set as goal to double the steel production within a year. The long term goal was that China's steel production should surpass the one of the United Kingdom. People all over the country were encouraged to set up backyard furnaces and produce steel. Metal, in case you are not aware, is not anything you can eat. It turned out that one could not produce high quality steel in backyard furnaces, and the output was virtually useless, in spite of the amount of effort put into it. Why this came as a surprise to the enlightened leaders of the country is difficult to say.

And now, almost fifty years later, high quality steel is one of the leading sectors in China. It got there not through entusiasm and encouraging propaganda, as Mao Zedong, 毛泽东, tried to do it, but through the evil capitalism he so ardently had tried to fight. China today produces about 30 times as much steel as the United Kingdom (英国).