China’s Coal Imports Dip 6% As Local Prices Slump

By Svetlana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Weak demand and domestic prices at four-year lows led to a 6% annual decline in Chinese coal imports in March, according to official data.

Last month, China imported a total of 38.73 million metric tons of coal, compared to 41.38 million tons in imports in the same month of 2024, per data from the General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters on Monday.

The domestic Bohai-Rim Bay thermal coal price index indicated that the domestic price for medium-grade coal slipped at the end of last week to its lowest level since March 2021, according to estimates by Reuters.

China’s combined January-February coal imports – reported together to smooth out Lunar New Year effects – had increased by 2% from the same period of 2024.

But the dip in March means that Chinese coal imports for the first three months of 2025 were 0.9% lower than in the first quarter of last year.

In view of the low domestic coal prices, weaker demand, and high coal inventories at ports, China’s import decline in March wasn’t a surprise, and analysts will not be surprised if the trend of lower coal imports continues for the next few months.

Globally, China is the leader in renewable energy capacity installations, but it is also a leader in coal-fired power and continues to be the key driver of record-high global coal demand.

Thermal power generation, which is overwhelmingly dominated by coal, rose by 1.5% in 2024 from a year earlier, to a record high of 6.34 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed. 

The persistent growth in Chinese coal demand, including for power generation, goes to show that coal remains the baseload of China’s power system to back up the surge in renewables and will stay such for years to come as power demand jumps with the increasing electrification of homes and transport.