"Foreign finance supporting Chinese ore scams?"

From MacroBusiness:

From the FT, the battle for survival of those iron ore traders marked for extinction goes on:

Imports could continue to climb as iron ore traders take the place of steel traders in providing credit to mills. Traders affiliated with Chinese companies big enough to secure access to bank loans say they are fronting purchases on behalf of steel mills whose access to credit has been cut off.

Domestic steel traders had kept their suppliers afloat with their own credit lines until defaults last year caused banks to tighten lending to that sector. Last month, CITIC Bank wrote down $852m in bad loans, most of them to steel trading companies in the Yangtze River delta. And rings of steel traders in eastern China are under investigation for exceeding the limits on their personal credit cards in an attempt to stay afloat....MORE