China is to ramp up its efforts to rein in unwanted steel output, especially that which is substandard and polluting, in order to contain risks from excess capacity and promote high-quality development in the steel industry, key industry officials said during the China Iron and Steel Association's annual midyear convention on Monday.

He Wenbo, executive vice-chairman of the CISA, said that to maintain the progress in cutting overcapacity, it is important to improve the layout of steel capacity on a national level, instead of just within a province, a city, or even a county.

He suggested measures to encourage competent steel companies to conduct mergers and acquisitions across cities, provinces and even regions, in order to efficiently cut capacity and enhance the national steel capacity layout.

He also suggested that it is important to evaluate the actual results of capacity replacement projects, to ensure removed old capacity outstrips new capacity, saying that construction of new capacity must be strictly regulated.

In the fast half of 2019, China produced 492 million tons of crude steel and 587 million tons of steel products, with year-on-year increases of 9.9 percent and 11.4 percent respectively, figures from the CISA showed.