China will remain a leader in coal production and consumption

At present, China is a leader in the production and consumption of coal and will keep this position in the future, as it is forecasted that they will be responsible for nearly 40% of global demand for this raw material.In 2020, hard coal mining in China is expected to reach approx. 4 billion tons. In the previous year - 2018, the financial expenditure on new coal capacity was about USD 45 billion, and the total capacity of these power plants equals the sum of the capacity of all coal power plants in the European Union.In addition, over the past few years, China has been a significant importer of coal after taking up growing supply from Indonesia or Australia. In turn, the fact that coal consumption is falling very slowly may mean that China will influence its global prices over the next few years.In contrast, the new tariff system can support further Chineese coal imports and at the same time put pressure on domestic prices. Despite the hypotheses of Platts analysts, which assume that 2020 will be a year in which coal imports to China will fall by less than 2%, i.e. to 215 million tons per year, it turns out that these hypotheses are unlikely to be confirmed, because within 9  first months of 2019, the level of imports has already exceeded last year's by 10%, and its further increase is very possible.The search forcheaper fuel will be exacerbated by the Chinese plan to reduce energy prices for industry and commercial users by 10%, especially since the trade war with the United States caused an economic slowdown, so companies were forced to recalculate costs.