readx; Iron ore pricing negotiations generally start in January every year, but since China participated in the iron ore pricing negotiations, in fact, before the formal negotiations began, they started early. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Iron ore pricing negotiations in 2008 started earlier and more intensely. Moreover, this time, it was China that took the initiative.

Previously, it was always the major iron ore producers who attacked, and China had little power to fight back, but this time, China finally began to fight back.

On May 18, 2006, the central government issued a series of policies to strictly restrict the export of steel products.

Before the policy was introduced, in April, compared with last year, exports increased by 146.48% year-on-year, fell to 39.52% in August, and fell back to 9.14% in September. It is estimated that the total exports of billets and steel products equivalent to crude steel in 2008 will be at least 37 million tonnes lower than that in 2007.

At the beginning of June, the Department of Industry of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China issued the "Notice on Clearing the Port of Imported Iron Ore in Hong Kong" to curb the hoarding of large quantities of iron ore, and some domestic ports began to raise the port storage fees of iron ore.

This measure also prepares for iron ore negotiations to a certain extent and creates favorable conditions.

Meanwhile, Chinese steelmakers suspended iron ore pallet charters from Australia and Brazil to China.

This measure has led to a significant drop in sea freight rates.

As China prepares, others will not sit idle, and as always, the first to charge is the major foreign investment banks, which have issued reports estimating the benchmark price of iron ore contracts for the 2008 fiscal year, soaring from 10% to 20% higher to 35% to 50% higher.

Ever since China became involved in the iron ore negotiations, this drama has been playing out every year.

Although formal negotiations have not yet begun, the psychological hints of different price increases, like high pressure, have almost dashed China's expectations of a 10%-15% increase in iron ore prices in 2008.

The big investment banks are working so hard because they have both stakes in major iron ore producers and are involved in various big gambles in iron ore-related industries, such as the FFA.

FFA refers to the freight forward contract market, that is, the ocean freight futures market.

At present, the two sides of this futures market are China, the major investment banks and iron ore producers, and even large steel companies in Europe, South Korea, etc.

Their modus operandi is to use futures to increase spot sea freight.

Since China's shipping market stands at 40 percent of the global market, as long as the sea freight rate increases a little, it is equivalent to drawing a lot of blood from China.

In addition to the major investment banks, iron ore producers, and large steel companies in Europe and South Korea, there are also many financial capitals and shipping companies, etc., who will immediately invest huge sums of money as soon as they see that there is an opportunity for China's demand to soar.

This is the time when gamblers are most excited about the fact that China has artificially suppressed sea freight rates in preparation for the 2008 iron ore pricing negotiations, which has led to a sharp drop in sea freight rates.

As long as China's demand does not decrease, sea freight cannot be suppressed, and China's suppression of sea freight is only a short-term behavior, which means that there is more room for the increase in sea freight in the future.

So, it's a good time to gamble.

At this time, the news of the merger of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton hit the market like a big bomb, and speculators became more and more crazy.

There are two types of speculators, international speculators who bet on the FFA and domestic speculators in China, who are increasingly hoarding iron ore.

Of course, gambling must be two-sided, there are bets up, there are bets down, the difference is only in the odds.

In December 2006, the odds for the FFA were 1 to 8.

This year's gambling game is particularly prosperous, and the plates are oversized.

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On December 23, 2006, the annual general meeting of the China Iron and Steel Chamber of Commerce was held in Yanjing.

For this conference, in the eyes of many people, it is chicken ribs, and it is not interesting to come, but they dare not come.

This dare not be because of any other pressure, but because I am afraid that I will miss it once there is any trouble.

The conference was very lively, but the vast majority of people were indifferently watching, and what they were most interested in was to find out the news and find out if there was any action by the central government.

The conference was held for three days, and on the last day, everyone came, because on the last day, Zhao Tiantan, Minister of National Resources, would give a speech.

This speech can be said to be empty, but no one dares to say it.

Zhao Tiantan's speech was not long, and in the ears of the vast majority of people, there was nothing new, and it was no different from what the Ministry of Resources said last year, but some people still heard different meanings when they said the same thing.

In the past few years, every year at the Chamber of Commerce conference, the Ministry of Resources will send someone to come and speak, but the same words, different people speak, the meaning may be nothing, or it may be great.

This year, it was Minister of Resources Zhao Tiantan who spoke.

In the past few years, the Ministry of Resources has come to speak, and there will always be a sentence, that is, don't hoard, the price of iron ore may fall.

Will the price of iron ore go down? To be honest, Zhao Tiantan didn't know, but today's speech was arranged by Premier Wu of the State Council.

Is there anything unusual about this? Many people who know about this arrangement are thinking.

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The United States has an all-round layout against China, and the United States will absolutely spare no effort to strike at China.

The reason why the United States is so energetic is not only because it is necessary to defeat China, the challenger to the empire, but also because the United States is about to hang itself, and they have placed all their hopes for saving the United States on China.

Of course, the Chinese will never want to, so they must be robbed.

Naturally, it is absolutely impossible to rob openly, and now we have to rob wisely, especially in China.

In order to succeed in robbing China, we must first make China have problems, and at least we must make China's economy have problems. Of course, it would be better if there were other areas that could go wrong, and the more problems there are in China, the better.

The more chaotic China is, the better they can fish in troubled waters.

Pushing up the prices of bulk metal minerals such as oil, iron, copper, lead, zinc, etc., is pushing up the operating costs of China's economy and making it difficult for China's political axe to regulate and control the economy.

In the same way, in other aspects, the fundamental point of creating problems for China is still the economy.

However, outside of the economy, there are really not many places where the United States can focus on it, and in the end, the search and search are finally found by smart people.

This focus is on the terrorists whom the American people hate the most.

Terrorists are looking for trouble with the United States, Europe and Russia, so why can't they make trouble with China?

Create terrorists for China, Tibetan Province, no play; Mongolia, there is no drama, there is no tradition; In the end, the smart Americans set their sights on Xinjiang Province and on the Uyghurs.

The 2006 Christmas bells have not yet dissipated, and a media campaign has begun in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Various media outlets in these countries, mainly television, have begun a war of smear against China, promoting China's policy of extermination of the Uyghur people.

February 17, 2007.

On this day is China's Chinese New Year's Eve, in the United States, the public television station PBS, which claims to be politically readable, broadcast a special program in which a young Chinese female journalist, Fang Xueli, tried her best to mislead the American people who knew nothing about Xinjiang Province.

Among them, one scene was a reporter from Fang Da asking an uneducated Han male driver if he had considered marrying a Uyghur wife.

The driver said no, the main reason is that the lifestyle is different, and he can't eat pork after getting married; Then, when asked why Uyghurs don't eat pork, the clumsy driver said that pigs are said to be the ancestors of the Uyghurs.

Of course, everyone knows that there are many prejudiced rumors among various ethnic groups in China, and some people even discriminate against other ethnic groups, but Ms. Fang's guide is extremely vicious.

After listening to the driver's opinion, she immediately faced the camera and said that this attitude of discrimination against Uyghurs is actually the attitude of all Chinese.

Remember, the Chinese in the Western media are only Han Chinese, and all non-Han Chinese are not "Chinese", and their place of residence is not China, but a colony illegally occupied by China.

Another scene is even more interesting, in order to show how the "Chinese" suppress the just resistance of the Uyghurs, the show uses a public trial meeting familiar to the Chinese.

In fact, PBS used a news clip broadcast by Xinjiang Provincial Television about the trial of a drug cartel in Urumqi.

The members of that drug cartel were interethnic, but to convey the message that this was a political prisoner being tried, all the footage of the Han criminals was removed, leaving only the footage of the criminals who did not look "Chinese."

Ironically, however, the judge who pronounced the verdict loudly on the bench was a Uyghur.

The biggest evidence that the Americans are trying to propagate China's persecution of the Uyghurs is that the Chinese government has migrated the Uyghur people from the harsh environment to the affluent areas.

Just as the U.S. smear was getting better, the British media "appropriately" disclosed inside news about Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's deportation of Uyghur "freedom fighters" captured by the Pakistani army to China for execution.

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The Red Mosque is an influential religious base in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, which has provided a large number of brave warriors for Afghanistan's resistance to the Soviet Union and the anti-Indian struggle in Kashmir.

However, in recent years, the Red Mosque has become closer and closer to the extremists, and because of the cooperation between the Pakistani political axe and the United States, there have begun to be quite a few differences, but these differences are more manifested in the young boys and girls in the mosque, running around the streets, doing some boring things like the morality police.

In addition, the moral students often harassed the shops and detained the police, but basically they were resolved peacefully under the restraint and advice of the police.

On February 27, 2007, just three days after the British media leaked, boys and girls at the Red Mosque detained seven Chinese.

After 17 hours of detention, seven Chinese were safely released.

However, although the hostage incident was resolved, the matter was not over, because the Red Mosque touched the scales of the whole of Pakistan.

Pakistan's backlash is China.

Friendship with China is Pakistan's highest national interest, which is higher than the interests of all Pakistani factions, and it is absolutely not allowed to take China's interests as the goal in the struggle between Pakistan's internal forces.

This is a forbidden area, and whoever touches it dies.

Pakistan's political axe, which has always been very tolerant of the Red Mosque, has become more inflexible than ever, and after the hostages were released, the Pakistani army surrounded the Red Mosque until the extremists laid down their arms and surrendered.

At this time, the extremists killed three Chinese businessmen in Pushawar, which completely angered Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, so he ordered a storming of the Red Mosque, completely eradicating the recalcitrant militants, and killing hundreds, if not thousands.

This incident shocked the world and made the West extremely unhappy.

This is because every time the United States urges the Pakistani military to take action against the Taliban forces in the tribal areas, Pakistan always finds all kinds of excuses to push back and do things perfunctorily.

However, it now appears that Pakistan is not undetermined to go on a killing spree against extremists, but it will be up to them to whom they are targeted.

If it is against the West, the Pakistani political axe will pay lip service without real movement, but if the extremists dare to attack China, the Pakistani political axe and the army will definitely leave the offender without a place to bury.

Moreover, this time, the Pakistani political axe told the extremist forces in an extremely tough way: you can do anything, just don't focus on the Chinese.

There is no doubt that this has created great difficulties for the United States in its subsequent efforts to use extremist forces to deal with China, and this is precisely the main means by which the United States can deal with China.

The Gwadar port built by China is of great significance to China.

Oil and gas pipelines between China and Pakistan are already being laid, and construction has begun on railways and highways through the Karakoram.

When these facilities are fully completed, Chinese oil and gas from Iran and Iraq will be able to come in from here.

At that time, China's sea transportation lines will only need to protect the port of Gwada and Port Sudan near the coast, which is tantamount to scrapping all 11 of their aircraft carrier fleets.

The United States hurts, it hurts to death.

The Gwadar port is the key to this series of construction projects, and this gives the United States the opportunity to wreak havoc.

For this, the United States has to thank its younger brother Britain.

The port of Gwadar and the connected transport routes are in Balochistan, which is unstable and has strong separatist forces.

Almost all of the world's problems are made up by the British.

In 1839, Britain launched its first war of aggression against Afghanistan.

After quickly occupying the Afghan capital Kabul and propping up the puppet regime for more than two years, the British army, together with all its supporters, had to retreat to India under the blows of the anti-British forces in Afghanistan.

At that time, the British soldiers, their families and other civilians, including women and children, totaling 15,600 people, were attacked by Afghan tribes during the retreat, and less than 40 survived in India.

Naturally, Britain was not willing to accept defeat, and in the following decades, Britain never gave up its efforts to return to Afghanistan, and finally occupied the entire territory of Afghanistan after the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880.

Then, Britain came up with its own trick, which was to force the Afghan political axe to accept the demarcation of the border, regardless of the terrain and ethnic distribution, and divide the Pashtuns into the two countries of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, and divide the Baloch into the three countries of today's Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

The Baloch people have fought many tragic wars with Pakistan, and at the most intense time, Pakistan sent 100,000 troops.

It is this situation that allows the United States to fish in troubled waters.

The so-called fishing in troubled waters means using a small group of shadow organizations controlled by the United States to hide among the rabble of large separatist forces to attack Chinese engineers and technicians engaged in construction in Balochistan.

Of course, as long as Chinese are attacked in Balochistan, with or without evidence, China will blame the Americans.

China's retaliation was also less drastic by bombing NATO's supply convoys.

Therefore, no matter how clever the United States plays in Afghanistan, in the end, it will lift a stone and shoot itself in the foot.

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At 10 a.m. on March 13, 2007, eight police officers wearing crisp police uniforms walked into Rio Tinto's Shanghai office and arrested Hu Shitai, the chief representative of the office.

Hu Shitai is a successful man, and he is already a billionaire in his early forties.

Of course, a billionaire in his early forties is nothing, but Hu Shitai is different, he is just a senior employee of Rio Tinto.

Hu Shitai has always been proud and majestic, but at this moment, his face turned white.

Hu Shitai was arrested along with three other employees.

Hu Shitai's arrest can be regarded as blowing up a pool of spring water.

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A lot of people are hairy, and the big companies, big investment banks and financial capital that participate in the FFA gambling market are all hairy.

The three major iron ore producers, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Vale, gambled heavily on the FFA, and the main means of profit was to force the price of sea freight to rise, and the surname of the gambling was not very heavy.

However, sometimes it is not up to them to decide whether it is important or not, and it depends on whether anyone is involved in the bet.

Betting, that is, the three major iron ore companies buy up, and some people buy down accordingly. If buying up is the mainstream, then the more money you buy, the bigger the gambling handicap.

Now, the money that is betting on the decline in sea freight rates in 2008 has reached one billion dollars. Moreover, the odds have dropped to 1 to 3, but the funds to buy the fall are still entering.

There is no doubt that the money to buy the fall came from China.

There are two possibilities for China to do this, one is to really buy down, and the other is to force iron ore producers to make concessions, which is a bluff.

Many people were already furious in their hearts, but at this time, Hu Shitai was arrested again, and naturally he was a soldier.

What exactly do the Chinese want to do? Is it a bluff, or is there really something to be done?

The negotiations are scorching, and the attitudes of both sides are getting tougher and tougher.

What to do?

The negotiations captured the attention of the whole world.

(To be continued)