ceramic

China ceramic industry has a long history, and the producing areas are widely distributed all over the country. Up to now, many major producing areas have taken shape, including Foshan of Guangdong, Jingdezhen of Jiangxi, Zibo of Shandong, Jiajiang of Sichuan, and Fujian, etc. In recent years, China ceramic industry developed rapidly and now has taken 2/3 plus of world total output of ceramic products. The output of daily ceramics, building ceramics, and sanitary ceramics has ranked to the first place in the world, and the export of ceramic products is rising year by year as well. In 2005, China's ceramic output reached 95 million tons, and the ceramic export achieved USD 4 billion, both of which ranked world first. Besides, the national output of ceramics also amounted to 16.3 billion pieces, sharing 2/3 of the world's total, and the ceramic export volume achieved 11.7 billion pieces as well, but the average value of each piece only remained as low as between USD 0.21 to USD 0.25. In the first half of 2006, the output of building ceramics grew rapidly and the output of the major producing areas also achieved a dynamic increase. During this period, the national output of ceramic tiles achieved 1.67 billion sq. meters, up by 28.8％ over the same period of 2005 and the accumulated sales/output ratio was 94.6％, up by 0.7％ year-on-year. Shandong, Guangdong, Fujian and Sichuan still maintained rapid growth. The accumulated output of the four provinces achieved 1.47 billion sq. meters, up by 30.8％ year-on-year. The growth rate of Fujian and Sichuan were 50％ plus and 40％ more respectively in the first half of 2006.