China's coal imports, including lignite, thermal and metallurgical coal, totaled 13.96 million mt in October, slumping nearly 31% from 20.1 million mt a year earlier, preliminary data released by the General Administration of Customs over the weekend showed.

"Coal imports collapsed to their lowest level in [4 1/2] years," ANZ analysts said in a note. "While the data isn't broken out into coal type, we suspect the weakness could be attributed to metallurgical coal, in line with the downturn in steel and iron ore markets."

Over January-October, China imported 170.31 million mt of coal, down 29.9% from 242.95 million mt in the same period of 2014.

China exported 4.54 million mt of coal during January-October, down 6.5% from 4.86 million mt a year ago.

In October, China exported 520,000 mt of coal, compared with about 490,000 mt in October last year.