China's raw coal production edged up 3.3% year over year to 3.52 billion tonnes in 2017 due to increasing demand and high-quality capacity, Xinhua News Agency reported March 19, citing the National Bureau of Statistics.

The increase was the first since 2014, after output hit a six-year low in 2016, the report said.

China's coal consumption also rose year over year in 2017, by less than 1%, but its share of the country's total energy consumption declined 1.6 percentage points to 60.4%. In 2018, the government plans to slash coal's share of the country's primary energy mix to 59% and to just half by 2020 as part of its efforts to transition to cleaner energy sources.