China’s coal production last month inched down by 1%, to 385.63 million tons, Reuters has reported, citing official statistics data. The decline was from an all-time high achieved in March.
Over the first four months, China’s coal production also dipped, to 1.58 billion tons, which was a modest 0.1% decline on the first four months of 2025, and came amid ample supply, and despite higher coal generation and lower imports.
Imports of coal into China slid by 14% last month to 33.1 million tons, with imports for the four-month period since January at 149.4 million tons, down by 2.1% on the year, the data also showed.
Power generation from coal and gas-fired plants in China last year went down for the first time in a decade, driven lower by alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. Coal production, meanwhile, rose, prompting the government to address concerns of oversupply with production curbs. Even with them, coal production in the country last year hit an all-time high, rising 1.2% to a total of 4.83 billion tons.
The decline in imports observed over the first four months of this year appears to be an extension of a trend that began last year. In 2025, China’s coal imports fell by 9.6% from 2024 to a total of 490 million tons, driven lower by the booming domestic production and lower thermal power generation.
Right now, China is among the countries that are ramping up thermal power generation at the expense of gas, which is in increasingly tight supply as a result of the Middle Eastern crisis. In China, this translated into a 3.1% annual increase in coal and gas generation last month, according to the new data. Thermal power generation, which is mostly coal, went up by 3.6% on the year last month.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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