3.4. Problems existing in China iron ore supply

3.3. Investment development on overseas rights and interest mines

10 Iron Ores and Iron Oxide Materials

and construction of more than 40 large-scale overseas iron ore projects [17].

Figure 5. Chinese enterprises overseas iron ore investment.

China's iron ore resources development of "going global" has 30 years of history. In 1987, Sinosteel Australia Limited and Australia's Morris Iron Ore Co., Ltd. formed a contractual joint venture to jointly develop and operate Chana Iron Mine, making it the first overseas iron ore investment project. A total investment of 200 million US dollars, officially put into operation in 1990, iron ore production in 2011 reached 11 million tons. Due to the still low domestic demand at that time, the increase rate of overseas investment and mine development was relatively slow. In recent years, due to the sharp increase of iron ore demand, the scale of overseas investment in iron ore in China began to gradually expand [14–16]. From 2006 to 2017, the investment in the rights and interests of overseas iron mines of various types of enterprises totaled more than 30 billion dollars and participated in the exploration, design

China's overseas investment in iron ore is mainly concentrated in Western Australia, Quebec of Canada, Brazil, Mongolia and West Africa (Figure 5). Among them, there are 19 cooperation projects in Australia with high grade and abundant resources of iron ore, accounting for almost half of all overseas projects [17]. Canada mainly includes five projects of Wuhan Iron and Steel Group Company. There are three projects in West Africa, mainly in Guinea where invested 20 billion yuan, conducted by the Aluminum corporation of China. Due to differences in infrastructure investment, labor costs and resource conditions, the cost of projects invested in West Africa is lower than that in Australia. Up to 2013, China's overseas rights and interests iron ore production capacity of 73 million tons, accounting for about 10% of iron ore imports. However, compared with Japan's overseas rights and interests iron ore production capacity of 74 million tons, accounting for 57–70% of its annual import of iron ore, the gap between China and Japan is too large [17]. The global high-quality resources of iron ore have all been controlled by four enterprises. Oversea investment is high cost. As iron ore prices soared, Chinese enterprises have gone out to prospecting. When the spot price is as high as 130–180 US dollars/ton, the average mining cost can be sufficient for 100 US dollars. Based on this, mining enterprises go out to buy the
