On September 16th, the 2025 4th Western Steel Forum was grandly convened in Xi’an, the ancient capital of China. The event was guided by China National Association of Metal Material Trade(CAMT) and co-hosted by LGMI, Langubuguo, the Internet and Digital Intelligence Special Committee of CAMT, and the Construction Steel Branch of CAMT. The forum, themed Silk Road Integration and Digital Interconnection, brought together over 500 participants, including macroeconomic experts, industry leaders, representatives from upstream and downstream industrial chain enterprises, and delegates from financial and futures institutions.

Chen Leiming, Executive President and Secretary-General of CAMT, was invited to participate in the conference, where he delivered an address titled Unite Efforts to Forge a New Landscape for High-Quality Development of the Steel Industry and a keynote speech themed Reflections and Recommendations on the Transformative Development of Steel Distribution Enterprises.

In his address, Chen Leiming noted: As we review the year 2025, we continue to confront a complex and fluid domestic and international environment, alongside profound adjustments and restructuring within the industry. On one hand, the international landscape is undergoing profound evolution: unilateralism and trade protectionism are on the rise, and the reshaping of global industrial and supply chains is accelerating. On the other hand, China’s domestic economy is transitioning from "extensive growth" to "high-quality development," and from "factor-driven growth" to "innovation-driven growth." For the steel industry specifically, beyond navigating the complex and volatile domestic and international economic context, it also faces a series of challenges—including severe mismatches between steel production and sales, slowing demand, structural adjustments, and landscape restructuring.

Chen Leiming put forward the following recommendations for the development of the steel industry:

1. Contextual Awareness: Grasping Era Transformations and Industry Essence

It is imperative to recognize that the fundamental logic underpinning the steel industry’s development has undergone a radical shift, with the sector entering a phase of in-depth strategic transformation, resource restructuring, business format adjustment, and model reconfiguration. Enterprises are advised to accurately anticipate macroeconomic and industrial trends, conduct scientific assessments of market dynamics, and balance awareness of severe challenges with recognition of opportunities embedded in crises.

2. Strategic Resilience: Upholding Core Business Commitments and Development Confidence

Amidst a grim and complex market environment, maintaining strategic resilience is critical. Stakeholders should remain committed to their core business—avoiding discouragement, passivity, impulsive actions, or abandonment—and align innovation and transformation efforts with core business pathways and supply chain ecosystems.

3. Stable Development: Enhancing Industry Self-Discipline and Promoting Supply-Demand Balance

Achieving stable and healthy development of the steel industry requires multi-stakeholder collaboration. A key priority is capacity reduction and production control, which are indispensable for the industry to overcome current challenges. Government authorities are establishing long-term regulatory mechanisms, such as new capacity governance frameworks to prevent "involutionary competition," upgrading standards for energy consumption, environmental protection, and quality to drive the exit of backward capacity, and fostering self-discipline to avoid disorderly competition. Enterprises should move beyond simplistic "buy-sell" transactions to deepen service provision and pursue innovative development.

4. Innovation and Upgrading: Embracing Digital Transformation and Advancing High-End, Green Development

Innovation, as the primary driver of development, manifests in four dimensions:

Digital transformation: Leveraging digital technologies to advance intelligent manufacturing, build smart supply chains, and develop industrial internet platforms, thereby enhancing production, operational, and collaborative efficiency.

High-end development: Moving beyond homogeneous competition by prioritizing refined, high-quality production and services, and expanding market presence through product, technology, and service upgrades.

Green transformation: Under the "dual carbon" goals, green and low-carbon development has become an inevitable requirement.

Supply chain collaborative innovation: Constructing modern steel supply chains, connecting upstream and downstream enterprises for strategic collaboration, and optimizing supply chains (extending, supplementing, strengthening, and refining) to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and achieve resource sharing and complementary advantages.

Chen Leiming emphasized that the western region serves as a critical growth pole for China’s economic development and a core area for the transformative advancement of the steel industry. The western steel sector exhibits urgent demand for high-quality development, coupled with enormous potential, a broad market space, and abundant strategic opportunities. Stakeholders should fully leverage pivotal strategic initiatives such as the Western Development Strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the east-to-west industrial transfer, strengthen regional synergy, and construct a western steel industry ecosystem to achieve mutual benefit and win-win outcomes.

In his keynote speech, Chen Leiming analyzed the domestic and international market dynamics, existing challenges, and emerging opportunities confronting the steel industry, and provided a forward-looking outlook on its future trajectory. He argued that as a pillar industry of China’s national economy and an irreplaceable material for infrastructure construction and industrial manufacturing, the steel industry still holds broad prospects for development. Notably, amid the critical phase of deep industry adjustment, restructuring, innovation, and upgrading, enterprises must timely adjust and upgrade their strategic thinking, core concepts, production systems, management models, and service systems—responding to changes with adaptive actions, pursuing transformation through proactive adjustments, and fostering innovation amid dynamic shifts to achieve growth and renewal in the process of change.

Chen Leiming, drawing on nearly two decades of in-depth empirical research and field investigations across enterprises and the steel industry, put forward practical and actionable recommendations for large, medium, and small-scale steel distribution enterprises to navigate the current round of industry-wide transformations and disruptions. He argued that enterprises must first abandon the traditional mindset of positioning themselves as "steel sellers" and redefine their role as "resource integrators and providers." Second, they should completely discard the outdated model of relying on "buy-sell arbitrage" for survival, and instead focus on strategic initiatives such as: constructing integrated steel supply chains; extending service value chains; transitioning toward processing, distribution, and manufacturing; evolving into comprehensive steel service providers; leveraging technological innovation tools to enhance the technological content of production and operations; utilizing internet platforms to reconstruct a new industrial ecosystem; applying futures and derivatives instruments to hedge market volatility risks; actively promoting mergers and acquisitions to increase industry concentration; and expanding internationally through cross-border cooperation.

Chen Leiming emphasized that each stage of industry development brings new pressures and challenges, alongside emerging resources and opportunities. He expressed confidence that through this round of large-scale adjustments, market reshuffling, and structural reconstruction, the steel industry will establish a new ecosystem and business models that align more closely with the new trends and patterns of economic development, and that the future of the steel industry will be even more promising.