China's Customs Bureau has reported that Russian imports rose to 277,000t in the first two months of this year. That represents almost 60% of all the metal imported by China in that period. Indonesia and India were the other two major suppliers of primary metal to the Middle Kingdom.

China imports metal despite being the world's largest producer. There are some grades of metal that China doesn't produce; for instance, some special high-purity products are often referred to as 5N or 6N products. The N represents the number of decimal places of purity guaranteed, so 99.99999 or 99.999999 per cent purity.

China also imports metal to circumvent local VAT requirements. For instance, if you are an Indian car manufacturer and you want alloy wheels from China, you send the equivalent amount of metal to China and get the same volume of wheels back.

Net imports for the first two months, across all origins, was 472,000t, an increase of 222 per cent.