The world's top steel producer brought in 2.46 million tonnes of semi-finished steel products last month, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.
That was up 4.2% from June and the highest monthly total on customs database records going back to January 2017.
Imports from India stood at 660,851 tonnes in July, accounting for 27% of China's total purchases, the customes data showed. Shipments from Russia were at 479,044 tonnes, equating to 20% of the total.
The rising imports have been spurred by robust steel demand for Chinese infrastructure projects after Beijing's economic stimulus investments and a recovering domestic manufacturing sector. The rest of the world, meanwhile, continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting its steel consumption.
"Overall demand in other countries is not very good, but mills need to maintain production, so the spare products were shipped to China at lower prices," said Richard Lu, senior analyst at CRU in Beijing.
In addition to semi-finished steel, finished-steel product imports also jumped in July. China imported 2.61 million tonnes of those products in July, the highest level since April 2004.
However, CRU's Lu warned that purchases could ease in the coming months as overseas demand recovers gradually while domestic production remains high.
China churned out a record 93.36 million tonnes of crude steel last month.
(Reporting by Min Zhang and Tom Daly; Editing by David Goodman)
